Negotiating With Imperialism: Japan and the Unequal Treaty Regime, 1858--1872

307 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000.After an historiographical introduction, Chapter 1 traces the background to Japan's treaty relations, particularly in comparison with the Chinese experience, and discusses the making of the 1858 treaty. Chapter 2 treats the first half-decade after the signing of the treaties, 1858 to 1862; this period was the high tide of diplomatic accommodation and witnessed the emergence of a balance of interests between the two sides. Far from adopting a supine posture towards the West, the Tokugawa bakufu triumphed in matters such as the location of treaty ports and the timing of their opening. Chapter 3 explores international culture of the treaty ports, where seemingly concrete cultural boundaries were transgressed, leading to new understandings and deeper interaction between Japanese and Westerners. Chapter 4 turns to the years 1862--67, and traces the bakufu's defense of this balance of interests even in the face of the weakening of accommodation. Chapter 5 examines the Meiji experience of treaty relations 1868--72, and investigates the development, dispatch, and eventual failure of the Iwakura Mission. The conclusion briefly relates Japan's subsequent Asian policy, as it attempted to establish a Western-style international treaty system vis-a-vis China and Korea. This dissertation thus reassesses late-Tokugawa and early Meiji foreign policy, illustrates the malleability of both European and Asian cultural boundaries, and questions the extent of Western power at the zenith of Victorian imperialism.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Negotiating With Imperialism: Japan and the Unequal Treaty Regime, 1858--1872

307 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000.After an historiographical introduction, Chapter 1 traces the background to Japan's treaty relations, particularly in comparison with the Chinese experience, and discusses the making of the 1858 treaty. Chapter 2 treats the first half-decade after the signing of the treaties, 1858 to 1862; this period was the high tide of diplomatic accommodation and witnessed the emergence of a balance of interests between the two sides. Far from adopting a supine posture towards the West, the Tokugawa bakufu triumphed in matters such as the location of treaty ports and the timing of their opening. Chapter 3 explores international culture of the treaty ports, where seemingly concrete cultural boundaries were transgressed, leading to new understandings and deeper interaction between Japanese and Westerners. Chapter 4 turns to the years 1862--67, and traces the bakufu's defense of this balance of interests even in the face of the weakening of accommodation. Chapter 5 examines the Meiji experience of treaty relations 1868--72, and investigates the development, dispatch, and eventual failure of the Iwakura Mission. The conclusion briefly relates Japan's subsequent Asian policy, as it attempted to establish a Western-style international treaty system vis-a-vis China and Korea. This dissertation thus reassesses late-Tokugawa and early Meiji foreign policy, illustrates the malleability of both European and Asian cultural boundaries, and questions the extent of Western power at the zenith of Victorian imperialism.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Long live pacifism! : narrative power and Japan’spacifist model

International relations research acknowledges that states can have different security policies but neglects the fact that ‘models’ may exist in the security policy realm. This article suggests that it is useful to think about models, which it argues can become examples for emulation or be undermined through narrative power. It illustrates the argument by analysing Japan’s pacifism—an alternative approach to security policy which failed to become an internationally popular model and, despite serving the country well for many years, has even lost its appeal in Japan. Conventional explanations suggest that Japan’s pacifist policies were ‘abnormal’, and that the Japanese eventually realized this. By contrast, this article argues that narratives undermined Japan’s pacifism by mobilizing deep-seated beliefs about what is realistic and unrealistic in international politics, and launches a counter-narrative that could help make pacifism a more credible model in world politics