Places, Images, Times & Transformations

Treaty Ports

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Kanagawa/Yokohama

According to the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, Kanagawa was to have been the treaty port. This was where American Minister Townsend Harris, English Minister Rutherford Alcock (1809–1897) and Dutch Consul Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek (1833–1916) moved into abandoned temples to set up shop. The Japanese government unilaterally moved the settlement to Yokohama. For the Japanese, Yokohama had the advantage of being cut off from the mainland by a river, which could recreate the conditions of Dejima, did not displace many Japanese, and was further removed from the Tōkaidō, the main road that led to Edo and therefore more secure. The diplomats protested because it was not what had been agreed to, but they fought a losing battle. The merchants preferred Yokohama because it had a better harbor, so most of them refused to move to Kanagawa.

This separation from the diplomats and their security meant rough going in the early years because even if the port had been established with gunboat diplomacy, there were no gunboats to protect the settlers from anti-foreign radicals. The reason that merchants were not given more support is that the French and British were distracted by war in China, and the Americans by the Civil War. These fears were not unjustified because a number of foreigners were assassinated in Yokohama. Perhaps the best known of these was Henry Heusken (1832–1861). He was a Dutchman who had immigrated to the United States. Heusken was taken on by the Americans as an interpreter because Dutch was still the language best known by Japanese interpreters. Because he was multilingual, he was often loaned out to other missions. He was assassinated on the way back to the American mission after assisting the Prussians in their treaty negotiations in March of 1861. He was popular in the foreign community and widely mourned.

Another danger for early treaty port residents was fire. Fires tore through the new port repeatedly during the first decade. Eventually, things calmed down and Yokohama became the heart of Western culture in Japan. It housed the biggest foreign community and the most trade passed through its harbors. Many important government and cultural figures spent time in Yokohama to learn English and about the West. The first railway in Japan connected Tokyo to Yokohama in 1873. The first brewery was established there, as was the first track for horse racing. There are still a few signs of this foreign past in Yokohama, but it was badly damaged in the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923.

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