Tojin yashiki
- Established: 1689
- Japanese: 唐人屋敷 (Toujin yashiki)
The Tôjin yashiki, or "Chinamen's mansions," was a compound in Nagasaki built by the Tokugawa shogunate to serve as residences and a base of operations for Chinese merchants in the city.
The walled compound served a similar function to the tiny Dutch East India Company settlement on Dejima, but was about twice the size, covering roughly seven acres. Surrounded by palisades and a moat, the compound included residences, offices, and warehouses, and housed on average 2,000 Chinese merchants and sailors, though the number rose to nearly 5,000 at times. While some Chinese residents of the city recognized as full members of Japanese society (a pre-modern equivalent to naturalized citizens, or perhaps resident aliens) were subject to the same restrictions as any Japanese commoner - free to move about the city and the archipelago, but forbidden from going overseas[1] - those associated with the Tôjin yashiki were prohibited from leaving the compound or moving freely about the city except to go to and from the ships, and to engage in authorized interactions with Japanese merchants. Like the Dutch, but unlike very nearly all Japanese, the Chinese associated with the merchant compound were permitted, however, to travel overseas and return to Japan.
Chinese had been permitted to move more freely up until the late 17th century, when in 1689, in response to a rise in smuggling activities,[2] the Tôjin yashiki compound was constructed and the Chinese were restricted to it, as the Dutch were on Dejima. No women were permitted in the compound, with the exception of courtesans from the Maruyama pleasure district; the courtesans were also the only Japanese permitted in the district other than shogunate officials. Though permitted to stay overnight on Dejima, the courtesans were not permitted to do so in the Chinese compound. The compound was also provided with a supply of pork, from pigs raised just outside the city.[3]
In the 1820s, many residents of the Tôjin yashiki managed to bribe their way into freer movement around the city, and freer & more direct interactions with Japanese merchants. The shogunate attempted to put an end to this by having Kuroda Naritaka, lord of Fukuoka han, station guards outside the Chinese compound. The Chinese responded with a three-day-long riot, and though the samurai were able to restore order, trade in the port - and revenues for the shogunate's Nagasaki customs house in particular - declined in the 1830s. The shogunate initially blamed this decline on competition from smuggling organized or supported by Satsuma han, but in fact, the weakness of the Dutch East India Company in the 1800s-1820s, and increased competition for the foreign merchants from domestic Japanese products played important roles as well.[4]
References
- Robert Hellyer, Defining Engagement, Harvard University Press (2009), 55-56.
- ↑ Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation, M.E. Sharpe (1998), 83.
- ↑ Mizuno Norihito, “China in Tokugawa Foreign Relations: The Tokugawa Bakufu’s Perception of and Attitudes toward Ming-Qing China,” Sino-Japanese Studies 15 (2003), 140n181.
- ↑ Herbert Plutschow, A Reader in Edo Period Travel, Kent: Global Oriental (2006), 47.
- ↑ Hellyer, 133-136.
