23. Letter 236, Keiō 3/7/20 (8/19/1867), Chūemon and Naotarō to Shōjirō.
24. Letter 240, Keiō 3/10/9 (11/4/1867), to Shōjirō.
25. Letter 238-1, Keiō 3/7/20 (8/19/1867), to Shōjirō.
26. わるあそび之頭取いたし候, letter 199-1, Keiō 2/6/17 (7/28/1866), to Shōjirō.
27. Letter 215-1, Keiō 3/2/13 (3/18/1867), Chūemon and Naotarō to Shōjirō.
28. Letter 243-1, Keiō 3/10/24 (11/19/1867), to Tsujiya Iemon and two others.
29. Mitsui Bunko, Mitsui jigyōshi: Honpen, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Mitsui Bunko, 1980), 661–64.
30. Letter 244-1, Keiō 3/10/28 (11/23/1867), to Shōjirō.
31. Letter 245-1, Keiō 3/11/8 (12/3/1867), to Shōjirō.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Translated and quoted in M. William Steele, Alternative Narratives in Modern Japanese History (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 65.
35. Kanagawa Prefectural Government, The History of Kanagawa (Yokohama: Kanagawa Prefectural Government, 1985), 179–81.
36. George M. Wilson, Patriots and Redeemers in Japan: Motives in the Meiji Restoration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 95–99.
37. Kanagawa-ken Kenshi Henshūshitsu, Kanagawa kenshi: Tsūshi hen, vol. 3 (Yokohama: Kanagawa-ken, 1980), 1244–45.
38. Letter 246, Keiō 3/11/20 (12/15/1867), Naotarō to Shōjirō.
39. Letter 247, Keiō 3/11/28 (12/23/1867), to Shōjirō.
40. Letter 250, Keiō 3/12/9 (1/3/1868), to Shōjirō.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. Letter 252, Meiji 1/1/18 (2/11/1868), to Shōjirō.
44. Albert M. Craig, Chōshū in the Meiji Restoration (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 21–22.
45. Masakazu Iwata, Ōkubo Toshimichi, the Bismarck of Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), 114.
46. Quoted in Steele, Alternative Narratives, 95.
47. At least one grave of a dead soldier, a samurai from Aizu, has been identified in Yokohama. See Nishikawa Takeomi and Itō Izumi, Kaikoku Nihon to Yokohama Chūkagai (Tokyo: Taishūkan Shoten, 2002), 57.
48. Translated and quoted in Steele, Alternative Narratives, 67.
49. Letter 252, Meiji 1/1/18 (2/11/1868), to Shōjirō.
50. Translated and quoted in Steele, Alternative Narratives, 62.
51. Letter 253, Meiji 1/1/23 (2/16/1868), to Shōjirō.
52. I am indebted here to Fabian Drixler and his unpublished paper “Alternative Japanese Nations in the Meiji Restoration: The Lost History of Azuma” (paper presented at the Heidelberg History Conference on “Global History and the Meiji Restoration,” Heidelberg, July 3–5, 2015).
53. Steele, Alternative Narratives, 68–75.
54. Letter 257, Meiji 1/3/8 (3/31/1868), to Tsuruse Seiemon, Katsunuma Chōbei, Kamisone Jōsuke, Imai Rin’emon, Saijō Matsuemon, and Kyōya Ishichi.
55. Ibid.
56. Letter 259, Meiji 1/4/13 (5/5/1868), to Shōjirō.
57. Steele, Alternative Narratives, 80.
58. Quoted and translated ibid., 78.
59. Letter 269-1, Meiji 1/5/20 (7/9/1868), to Shōjirō.
60. Letter 256, Meiji 1/3/2 (3/25/1868), to Shōjirō.
61. Letter 258-1, Meiji 1/4/2 (4/24/1868), to Shōjirō.
62. Letter 256, Meiji 1/3/2 (3/25/1868), to Shōjirō.
63. Letter 260-1, Meiji 1/4/21 (5/13/1868), to Shōjirō.
64. Letter 269-1, Meiji 1/5/20 (7/9/1868), to Shōjirō.
65. Letter 272-1, Meiji 1/6/1 (7/20/1868), to Shōjirō.
66. Letter 303-1, Meiji 2/6/9 (7/17/1869), to Shōjirō.
67. Letter 311-2, Meiji 2/7/11 (8/18/1869), Naotarō to Shōjirō.
68. Letter 318, Meiji 2/8/15 (9/20/1869), to Nakamura Chūjiro and Shōjirō.
69. Yabuuchi Yoshihiko, Nihon yūbin sōgyō shi: Hikyaku kara yūbin e (Tokyo: Yūzankaku Shuppan, 1975), 82.
70. Letter 329, Meiji 2/10/day unknown (11–12/1869), to Shōjirō.
71. Letter 282, Meiji 1/8/11 (9/26/1868), to Shōjirō.
72. Letter 319, Meiji 2/8/19 (9/24/1869), Chūemon and Naotarō to Shōjirō.
73. Letter 288, Meiji 2/1/19 (2/19/1869), to Shōjirō.
74. Letter 292, Meiji 2/2/14 (3/26/1869), to Shōjirō.
75. Letter 319, Meiji 2/8/19 (9/24/1869), Chūemon and Naotarō to Shōjirō.
76. Letter 152, Genji 1/12/29 (1/26/1865), to Shōjirō.
77. Letter 328, Meiji 2/10/29 (12/2/1869), Naotarō to Shōjirō.
78. Letter 334, Meiji 2/12/7 (1/8/1870), to Shōjirō.
79. Letter 351, Meiji 5/9/11 (10/13/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
80. Yokohama Zeikan, Yokohama Zeikan hyakunijū-nenshi (Yokohama: Yokohama Zeikan, 1981), 75.
81. John Black, Young Japan, 2:25.
82. Ibid.
83. The site still contains a stone carved with the name Gankirō, hidden away in a Japanese garden.
84. Yūzō Katō and Yokohama Shiritsu Daigaku, Yokohama, Past and Present: 100th Anniversary of Yokohama’s Incorporation, 130th Anniversary of the Port of Yokohama (Yokohama: Yokohama City University, 1990), 76.
85. Dallas Finn, Meiji Revisited: The Sites of Victorian Japan (New York: Weatherhill, 1995), 17.
86. Nishikawa Takeomi, Yokohama kaikō to kōtsū no kindaika (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyōronsha, 2004), 55–56.
87. Ibid., 56–57.
88. Ibid., 57–58.
89. Ibid., 58–59.
90. John Black, Young Japan, 2:46–47.
91. Quoted in Harold S. Williams, Foreigners in Mikadoland (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle, 1972), 102.
92. Nishikawa, Yokohama kaikō, 63–64.
93. Ibid., 67.
94. Ibid., 66.
95. Williams, Foreigners in Mikadoland, 127–28.
96. Ibid., 271.
97. Nishikawa, Yokohama kaikō, 68–71.
98. Ibid.
99. Ibid., 69–70.
100. Ibid., 73.
101. Ibid., 73–74. John Black, Young Japan, 2:281–82.
102. Nishikawa, Yokohama kaikō, 74.
103. Letter 357, Meiji 6/6/7 (6/7/1873), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
104. Nishikawa, Yokohama kaikō, 76.
105. John Black, Young Japan, 2:87–88.
106. Quoted in Williams, Foreigners in Mikadoland, 138.
107. Haruhiko Asakura, “The Origins of Newspapers and Magazines in the Bakumatsu and Meiji Periods,” in Japanese Studies, ed. Yu-Ying Brown, 179–87 (London: British Library, 1990).
108. Letter 264, Meiji 1/5/8 (6/27/1868), to Shōjirō and Naotarō.
109. Letter 344, Meiji 5/2/4 (3/12/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
110. Makishima Takashi, “Hikyaku ton’ya kyōya, shimaya no kinyū kinō: Mise gokantei to tegata no bunseki,” Tsūshin sōgō hakubutsukan kenkyū kiyō, no. 4 (2012): 37–65.
111. Quoted in D. Eleanor Westney, Imitation and Innovation: The
Transfer of Western Organizational Patterns to Meiji Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 113–14.
112. Yabuuchi, Nihon yūbin sōgyō shi, 83–85. Ishii Kanji, Jōhō tsūshin no shakaishi: Kindai Nihon no jōhōka to shijōka (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1994), 8–40. See also D. Eleanor Westney, “The Postal System,” in Westney, Imitation and Innovation, 100–145.
113. Ishii Kanji, Jōhō tsūshin no shakaishi, 76–81.
114. Yamanashi Prefecture, “Yamanashi-ken no rekishi (Meiji 12 [1879]–22 [1889]),” http://www.pref.yamanashi.jp/smartphone/info/98025047958.html.
115. June 4, 1860, in Francis Hall, Japan Through American Eyes: The Journal of Francis Hall, Kanagawa and Yokohama, 1859–1866 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 179–80.
116. John Black, Young Japan, 1:400–401.
117. Kikue Yamakawa, Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1992), 46–48.
118. John Black, Young Japan, 2:62–63. See Sepp Linhart, “The Western Discovery of Nudity in Japan and Its Disappearance,” in Actes du troisième colloque d’études japonaises de l’université Marc Bloch: La rencontre du Japon et de l’Europe, ed. Sakaé Murakami-Giroux, 157–72 (Aurillac: Publications orientalistes de France, 2007).
119. Utsumi Takashi, Yokohama ekibyōshi: Manji Byōin no hyakujūnen (Yokohama: Yokohama-shi Eiseikyoku, 1988), 4.
120. Kusama Shunrō, Yokohama yōshoku bunka kotohajime (Tokyo: Yūzankaku Shuppan, 1999), 41–42.
121. Ernest Mason Satow, A Diplomat in Japan: The Inner History of the Critical Years in the Evolution of Japan When the Ports Were Opened and the Monarchy Restored (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1921), 157.
122. Kusama, Yokohama yōshoku, 44.
123. Ibid., 68.
124. Steele, Alternative Narratives, 125.
125. Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, A Daughter of the Samurai (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1927), 25–27.
126. Letter 164, Keiō 1/5/29 (6/22/1865), to Shōjirō; letter 186, Keiō 1/11/7 (12/24/1865), Naotarō to Shōjirō; letter 187, Keiō 1/11/9 (12/26/1865), Naotarō to Shōjirō; letter 215-1, Keiō 3/2/13 (3/18/1867), Chūemon and Naotarō to Shōjirō.
127. Cited in Nishikawa and Itō, Kaikoku Nihon, 58.
128. For clothing, see Kazami Akira, Meiji shin seifu no mofuku kaikaku (Tōkyō: Yūzankaku, 2008), 20–31.
129. William Johnston casts some doubt on the theory that cholera was introduced to Japan on foreign ships; see his “The Shifting Epistemological Foundations of Cholera Control in Japan (1822–1900),” Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident 1, no. 37 (2014): 171–96.
130. Quoted in Susan L. Burns, “Constructing the National Body: Public Health and the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” in Nation Work: Asian Elites and National Identities, ed. Timothy Brook and Andre Schmid (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 35.
131. John Black, Young Japan, 1:114–15.
132. Ibid., 295.
133. Ibid., 368–70.
134. Ibid., 2:76–77.
135. Ibid., 1:295.
136. Utsumi, Yokohama ekibyōshi, 12.
137. Letter 87, Bunkyū 2/8/2 (9/5/1862), to Shōjirō.
138. Letter 130, Genji 1/2/12 (3/19/1864), to Shōjirō.
139. Letter 150, Genji 1/12/9 (1/6/1865), to Shōjirō.
140. See Brett L. Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590–1800 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 200.
141. Letter 140, Genji 1/9/23 (10/23/1864), to Shōjirō.
142. See Ann Jannetta, The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the “Opening” of Japan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007).
143. Letter 294, Meiji 2/2/26 (4/7/1869), to Shōjirō.
144. Translated and quoted in Steele, Alternative Narratives, 41.
145. Letter 341-1, Meiji 4/7/1 (8/16/1871), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
146. Osamu Saito and Masahiro Sato, “Japan’s Civil Registration Systems Before and After the Meiji Restoration,” in Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History, ed. Keith Breckenridge and Simon Szreter, 113–35 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
147. Letter 344, Meiji 5/2/4 (3/12/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
148. For a summary description of Tokugawa village administration, see Harumi Befu, “Village Autonomy and Articulation with the State,” in Studies in the Institutional History of Early Modern Japan, ed. John Whitney Hall and Marius B. Jansen, 301–14 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968).
149. Letter 320, Meiji 2/8/19 (9/24/1869), to unknown recipient.
150. Letter 321, Meiji 2/8/23 (9/28/1869), to Shōjirō.
151. Kanagawa, The History of Kanagawa, 188–91.
152. Letter 358, Meiji 6/6/15 (6/15/1873), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
153. Letter 319, Meiji 2/8/19 (9/24/1869), Chūemon and Naotarō to Shōjirō.
154. Letter 353, Meiji 5/11/6 (12/6/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
155. Yamanashi-ken, Yamanashi kenshi: Tsūshi hen (Kōfu: Yamanashi Nichinichi Shinbunsha, 2004), 5:18–23.
156. Letter 350, Meiji 5/9/1 (10/3/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
157. Letter 349, Meiji 5/8/27 (9/29/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
158. See, for example, Makihara Norio, Kyakubun to kokumin no aida: Kindai minshū no seiji ishiki (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1998).
159. Letter 347, Meiji 5/6/7 (7/12/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
160. Letter 298, Meiji 2/5/1 (6/10/1869), Rinzō to Shōjirō.
161. Letter 301, Meiji 2/5/14 (6/23/1869), to Shōjirō.
162. Letter 302, Meiji 2/5/18 (6/27/1869), Naotarō to Shōjirō.
163. Letter 303-2, Meiji 2/6/9 (7/17/1869), to Shōjirō.
164. Letter 305, Meiji 2/6/22 (7/30/1869), Naotarō to Shōjirō.
165. Letter 338, Meiji 3/9/6 (9/30/1870), Chūemon to Shōjirō.
166. Herbert Smith to Shanghai office, September 26, 1870, Jardine Matheson Archive, MS JM B10-9, reel 444, Cambridge University Library.
167. Ishii Kanji, Jōhō tsūshin no shakaishi, 80.
168. Letter 339-1: Meiji 4/3/24 (5/13/1871), Naotarō to Chūemon (Shōjirō); letter 340, Meiji 4/6/3 (7/20/1871), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
169. Letter 341-2, Meiji 4/7/1 (8/16/1871), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
170. Letter 339-1: Meiji 4/3/24 (5/13/1871), Naotarō to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
171. Letter 347, Meiji 5/6/7 (7/12/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
172. Letter 350, Meiji 5/9/1 (10/3/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
173. Letter 346, Meiji 5/5/2 (6/7/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
174. Letter 349, Meiji 5/8/27 (9/29/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
175. Letter 342, Meiji 4/8/20 (10/4/1871), Naotarō to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
176. Letter 352, Meiji 5/11/5 (12/5/1872), Naotarō to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
177. For biographical portraits of all three merchants, see Yokohama Kaikō Shiryōkan, ed., Yokohama shōnin to sono jidai (Yokohama: Yūrindō, 1995).
178. Letter 351, Meiji 5/9/11 (10/13/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
179. Letter 354, Meiji 5/11/25 (12/25/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
180. Letter 353, Meiji 5/11/6 (12/6/1872), Chūemon to Chūemon (Shōjirō).
181. Letter 357, Meiji 6/6/7 (6/7/1873), Chūemon to C
hūemon (Shōjirō).
182. Isawachō Chōshi Hensan Iinkai, Isawa chōshi, vol. 4 (Isawachō: Isawachō Kankōkai, 1987), 941.
183. Ibid.
184. The inscription on the stone is transcribed in full in Kanagawa-ken Toshokan Kyōkai, Kyōdo Shiryō Hensan Iinkai, Mikan Yokohama kaikō shiryō (Yokohama: Kanagawa-ken Toshokan Kyōkai, 1960), 148.
Conclusion: The Power of a Place
1. The classic text on this question is Nihon shihonshugi hattatsu-shi kōza (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1932).
2. See, for example, Daikichi Irokawa, The Culture of the Meiji Period (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985). For a detailed analysis of this “people’s history” movement, see Carol Gluck, “The People in History: Recent Trends in Japanese Historiography,” Journal of Asian Studies 38, no. 1 (November 1978): 25–50.
3. The classic statement is Edwin O. Reischauer, Japan: The Story of a Nation (New York: Knopf, 1970). See also Cyril Edwin Black, The Modernization of Japan and Russia: A Comparative Study (New York: Free Press, 1975). For a broader treatment of modernization issues, see Sheldon Garon, “Rethinking Modernization and Modernity in Japanese History: A Focus on State-Society Relations,” Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 2 (May 1994): 346–66. For more recent work, see Kären Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Edward E. Pratt, Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite: The Economic Foundations of the Gōnō (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999); D. L. Howell, “Hard Times in the Kantō: Economic Change and Village Life in Late Tokugawa Japan,” Modern Asian Studies 23, no. 2 (May 1989): 349–71.
4. Thomas C. Smith, The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1959); Furushima Toshio, Edo jidai no shōhin ryūtsū to kōtsū: Shinshū Nakauma no kenkyū (Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobō, 1951). For Saitō and Hayami, see Ōshima Mario, ed., Tochi kishōka to kinben kakumei no hikakushi: Keizaishijō no kinsei (Kyoto: Mineruva Shobō, 2009). See also D. L. Howell, “Proto-Industrial Origins of Japanese Capitalism,” Journal of Asian Studies 51, no. 2 (May 1992): 269–86.
5. Wigen, Making of a Japanese Periphery, 267. Pratt, Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite, 183. See also Howell, “Hard Times.”
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