Niigata
- Japanese: 新潟市 (Niigata-shi)
Niigata is the capital city of Niigata prefecture, and has a long history as a significant port town on the Sea of Japan coast.
During the Edo period, Niigata was a major port in Nagaoka han, Echigo province. For a number of years in the 1820s to early 1840s, ships sponsored by Satsuma han (including, chiefly, ones run by the Hamazaki family) brought sugar, sweet potatoes, and perhaps various Chinese goods, to Niigata to trade for cinnabar and medicinal goods. The shogunate, under rôjû Mizuno Tadakuni, seeking to exert greater control over domestic and foreign trade, added the port of Niigata and the neighboring village of Niigata-hama to the set of cities under direct shogunate control in 1843, setting the stage for it to become opened to foreign trade as a treaty port in the 1850s.
References
- Robert Hellyer, Defining Engagement, Harvard University Press (2009), 139.