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Asia-Pacific Magazine
No. 2 May 1996
pp. 33-37.

Japanese Science and Technology Before Perry: Stagnation or Development?

by Morris F. Low

The arrival of Americans in Japan led by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, in 1853-54, is often portrayed as the 'opening' of Japan, and the beginning of rapid, almost miraculous industrialisation during the Meiji period (1868-1912). The country was normally depicted at that time as a purely agricultural economy with little in the way of industrialisation. Even Japanese artists propagated this romantic image of a non-industrial Japan.

This over-emphasis of the role of Westerners in the development of Japanese science and technology underplays the importance of urbanisation, industrial development and trade which occurred during the preceding Tokugawa period (c.1600-1868). The notion that Japan was totally closed off from the rest of the world during a period of feudalistic stagnation is an idea which still strongly persists today. Here I would like to reject this notion and suggest that even Commodore Perry was impressed by Japanese technology which he and his squadron observed and subsequently recorded with admirable precision in their official report of 1856, Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan.

The Growth of Urban Japan

It has been suggested that a commercial revolution occurred during the Tokugawa period, preceding the industrial revolution of the Meiji period. The population of Japan doubled between the late 16th century and the first quarter of the 18th century. The dramatic growth in Japan's urban population from the 1580s to the mid-1700s may have had no parallel in pre-industrial world history.

What stimulated the growth of cities? The sankin kôtai system which required that feudal lords visit Edo (present-day Tokyo), take up residence and leave their families there as virtual hostages, caused the city to grow and triggered growth in production throughout Japan. The spread of irrigation became widespread early in the 17th century through the introduction of treadmills and other water-wheel technology. Land reclamation, which required substantial engineering skills, was also carried out on a large scale by the Shogunate.

Manufacturing

Merchant capitalism was developed by means of three types of production: craft guild production; domestic industry; and the beginnings of a factory system. Craft guild production entailed that each member of the guild have his own factory shop and perform his own work. Farmers and samurai who were experiencing financial difficulties turned to domestic industries, in order to supplement their income: the production of raw silk, cotton, silk textiles, paper, mats, lanterns etc. Instances of early factory system production can be found in the silk reeling and weaving industry. Evidence also exists for factory production of hemp, cotton, iron, wax and brewing. The standard of living rose throughout the Tokugawa period, reinforcing the idea that manufacturing output had increased. Large scale mining also occurred in enterprises such as the Miike Coal Mine.

Trade

The sankin kôtai system of alternate-year residence in Edo stimulated highway development, enabling a large volume of trade along the Tôkaidô route. Between 1600 and 1634 the Japanese conducted trading expeditions to different parts of Asia. Substantial trade continued even after the so-called closure edict in 1639.

This premodern growth can be linked to Meiji industrialisation. A very large proportion of Japanese farm families had experience of working in non-agricultural occupations. Handicraft, artisan and commercial skills consequently became more widespread, and workers more mobile. Textiles, paper, ceramics, metals, mining, brewing, wood products, transport and food processing provided peasant families with employment. Rural districts became linked by networks of commercial institutions.

Waste Disposal in Osaka and Edo

Technological development reached such a level during this time that, historian, Susan Hanley has argued that the level of Japan's metropolitan sanitation from the mid-17th century to mid-19th century surpassed that of the West, both in terms of water supply and waste disposal. Population and mortality rates testify to the fact that a healthier environment was created for urban populations. Customs concerning hygiene, food and drink, combined with the lack of domestic animals, meant that Japanese city life was more sanitary than in the West.

The use of human waste matter as fertiliser, meant that contamination of the water supply was avoided and the risk of spread of disease minimised. In the West, the practice of pits or cesspools for disposal of such matter meant that there was a heightened risk of polluting water supplies. In England, the invention of the water closet initially caused epidemics of infectious diseases as Londoners flushed their waste into the Thames River.

The geography of Japan's four main islands also meant that water tended to be purer at the source. Mountain ranges produced short, swift rivers. An abundant rainfall meant that the rivers were regularly flushed out, thus preventing pollution. Edo's water supply system was so well-designed that the modernisation process experienced at the end of the 19th century entailed no more than the replacement of wooden pipes with the newly developed metal pipes. For these kinds of reasons, including the raised level of sanitation, Japan was able to maintain large urban populations from the 16th century onwards, relatively undisturbed by serious outbreaks of disease. The Japanese were able to carry out large-scale engineering projects, and to implement various schemes or systems for the water supply and waste disposal.

The developments indicate the need for science and technology to be understood within the context of the culture in which it is implanted. Even after World War II, in Japan, night soil continued to be used as fertiliser and this did not encourage modernisation of toilet and sewage systems. As late as 1985, only 34 per cent of Japanese communities had had modern sewer systems installed. To a Westerner this might seem backward, but such a view depends very much upon how one defines 'modernisation'. In the first half of this century, there was neither the need nor the private or government funds available to install flush toilets and water-carriage sewage systems. Despite the slowness to modernise their waste disposal systems, the Japanese are said to enjoy the longest life expectancy in the world.

By a consideration of the methods employed in fundamental areas of development such as waste disposal, one can come to an understanding of how Japan's rapid urbanisation in the Tokugawa period may have smoothed the transition to an industrial society in the Meiji period.

The Myth of National Isolation

The fact that historians have overlooked these developments has much to do with the perception that Japan underwent a period of 'national isolation' between 1639 and 1854. This phase, commonly referred to as the 'closing of Japan' is usually understood to have been a deliberate policy of the bakufu or feudal government in the 1630s. The prohibition of Japanese overseas voyages, restrictions on weapons, bans on Christianity and on the travel of Catholics to Japan were in fact not conceived of within Japan as national seclusion or isolation.

Although not in use at the time, the term sakoku ('closed country') has been used to describe the 17th century. The term was first used in the title of an essay circulated privately by the Nagasaki Dutch interpreter Shizuki Tadao in 1801. Shizuki had translated the term into Japanese from an appendix from the German doctor Engelbert Kaempfer's The History of Japan. Shizuki used a Dutch translation of Kaempfer's essay, which was in turn based on the English version of the original German text. The English title was 'An Enquiry, whether it be conducive to the good of the Japanese Empire to keep it shut up as it now is, and not to suffer its inhabitants to have any Commerce with foreign nations, either at home or abroad'. In the original German, there is no equivalent of 'to keep it shut up'. Kaempfer had been physician of the Dutch factory in Nagasaki during the period 1690-91. It is clear that the use of the term sakoku represents the mistranslated perception of a European visitor to Japan in the 1690s. The concept was reimported back to Japan in the 19th century in a distorted form.

In the years 1633 to 1639 five sets of edicts or orders, referred to as 'Seclusion Edicts', were issued. These edicts expelled the Portuguese from their trading relationship with Japan, and also limited Japanese contact with Europeans to the presence of a few Dutch traders in Nagasaki. This did not, however, mean that the bakufu intended to close Japan off to the rest of the world. Rather, it hoped to continue the contact with more carefully controlled foreign relations with what it considered to be compatible foreign peoples.

Despite the 'seclusion edicts', Japan was still receptive to proposals for foreign relations. In 1674, for example, the bakufu reopened relations with Siam. The term sakoku was used in bakufu documents infrequently in the 1850s, but by this time, the idea of sakoku as a description of foreign policy of the 1630s, and as an historical fact, had been accepted by the public. Students of foreign relations during the Edo period have therefore taken the expulsion of the Portuguese as a reason to dismiss any consideration of foreign relations after 1640.

The idea of national isolation gained further acceptance by the use of the concept 'Christian century', especially by C.R. Boxer, to describe Japan's relations with Europe in the period 1549-1650. The relations come to an end with what Boxer calls the 'closed country policy' of 1633-40. He and his successor George Elison tend to portray the Japanese perception of Christianity as an external threat, and hence the bakufu took measures to deny it entry.

It can be shown, however, that Japan remained integrated into the East Asian region throughout the Tokugawa period in many different ways: political, diplomatic, intellectual, cultural, scholarly, in matters of national security and defence, intelligence, trade and through economic ties. The development of foreign relations have, nevertheless, been discussed in terms of developments in European policy: the expulsion of the Portuguese in 1639, the attempted eradication of Christianity, and the establishment of the Dutch monopoly in European trade with Japan.

The notion of 'seclusion' and the corresponding analysis of Japanese history ignores the fact that Japan is part of Asia. The resulting sense of 'belittlement' of Japan has been propagated for so long that even today, many Japanese bemoan how they are only a small island-nation, lacking in resources, and only with its people to rely upon. The reality is that Japan was integrated into a larger trading and cultural exchange system that was predominantly Asian. By overlooking Asian relations and emphasising European relations, one arrives at the standard view that the policies were designed to: (1) stop the subversive ideology of Roman Catholicism; (2) put profits of foreign trade into the sole hands of the bakufu; and (3) put an end to travel outside Japan. This approach interprets the impact of the 1630s edicts as creating great discontinuity in 'the natural course of Japanese history'. One could argue, however, that in terms of Japan's relations with Korea, Ryûkyû (Okinawa), and China, there is less discontinuity in Japanese foreign relations in the 1630s.

There is evidence of considerable dialogue with the outside world, if one is prepared to look beyond national boundaries. The bakufu actually permitted overseas travel by Japanese. The Tsushima daimyô (feudal lord) maintained a permanent trading factory in Pusan, Korea from 1611 into the Meiji period. There was as a result, considerable traffic between Tsushima and Korea. There was, similarly, considerable movement between Satsuma and Ryûkyû. The smallness of Japan's world was arguably as much a construct of Western historians as it was a product of bakufu policy.

Tokugawa Science

The relationship between rangaku ('Dutch studies') and Japan's intensive modernisation during the Meiji period has been at the centre of debate about the Tokugawa legacy for Japanese science. A plausible argument can be made that the origins of modern science can be found in the 17th century. Despite the 'national isolation policy', the 17th century saw a period of great activity in traditional learning and science. With the removal of the ban on the import of foreign books, bar those on Christianity, in 1720, a wave of Western influence began with the spread of rangaku throughout the country. Although rangaku was mainly concerned with medicine, there were soon translations of Western works on physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, geography, metallurgy, navigation, ballistics and military tactics. It was, arguably, more the attitudes and awareness which were engendered by Dutch studies during the Tokugawa period that was important rather than the content and continuity.

At the beginning of the Tokugawa period, there was some resistance from Confucian scholars such as the influential Hayashi Razan and others who were able to utilise the unified Neo-Confucian concept of Man and Nature to refute such Western ideas as a spherical earth. However from the mid-18th century, as Western astronomy gained more recognition, Confucian scholars refrained from such denials. One can view Chinese science as being part of a larger dynamic which has characterised the history of Japanese learning, rather than contributing to a period of retrogression. Likewise, Neo-Confucianism and jitsugaku ('practical learning') can be considered to be inseparable parts of a larger historical process of continuing growth rather than a period of stagnation. Indeed, there is considerable evidence to show that the importation of Western learning through Dutch studies during the Tokugawa period was made possible only by the prior assimilation of Chinese science.

Science and Confucianism only became truly established in Japan in the 17th century and the influence from China mainly came from books. The most authoritative works on medicine, astronomy, mathematics, military strategy and law were written in Chinese. Knowledge of the beginnings of Western science came from the Chinese translations of the original writings of the Jesuits in China. The study of Western science before the 19th century coexisted in a parasitic, rather than symbiotic, relationship with the Chinese approach to Nature.

The Tokugawa policy of encouraging learning by the study of Chinese classics necessitated a knowledge of flora and fauna referred to in the books. This gave a great impetus to the study of natural history in the Tokugawa period. These studies generally extended to include the flora and fauna mentioned in the Japanese classics as well. Its usefulness as an aid to the identification of medicinal drugs was also one factor contributing to the spread of these studies.

Mathematics developed rapidly with texts being printed and marketed in Japan. Interest in calendrical studies grew. The study of astronomy was stimulated by Chinese translations of Jesuit works on the subject. Research into agriculture and investigation of the different schools of Chinese medicine were a further part of the great spectrum of intellectual activity at this time. An atmosphere was finally created in Japan in which scientific studies were recognised as legitimate concerns.

We can therefore describe the history of learning and science in Japan as a series of successive waves of cultural influx coming into Japan from China and the West. But even the more conventional periodisation by the Japanese of their history into the kinsei ('modern age' from the Tokugawa period) and kindai ('modern period' from the Meiji period) also takes into account the modernisation processes set into place in the 17th century and the continuity between that period and later stages of Japan's modernisation in the 19th century.

The Coming of Perry

Given the above, one could argue that Japan's modernisation was in many ways a selective reinforcement of traditional institutions under the banner of 'Westernisation'. Japan was not closed to the rest of the world, so the idea that Perry opened it is an ill-founded one. Likewise, the idea that his arrival heralded the development of modern science and technology underestimates the developments which had already occurred, for example, in the form of Dutch studies, and agricultural and seagoing technology which were duly recorded in the official report compiled under the supervision of Commodore Perry.

Indeed, Perry realised that the thousand or so junks which he saw at the port of Hakodate, on the southwestern tip of the northern island of Hokkaidô, were constrained in design and size not due to any lack of Japanese ingenuity, but rather because of the strict laws created to ensure that most Japanese sailing vessels could not venture far from land. The Narrative of the Expedition indicates grudging praise of the Japanese: 'We saw nothing remarkable in the manner or workmanship of the Japanese shipbuilders. It is doubtful whether they have any scientific rules for drafting or modelling, or for ascertaining the displacement of their vessels; nor perhaps has it been necessary, as the law confined them all to one model and size'. (p. 450) The illustrations which accompany this statement tell a different story, for they are among the most handsome in the report, and their visual impact suggests a considerable degree of admiration.

Rear Admiral George Preble, who accompanied Perry on his expedition, noted how his fellow crewmen 'praised the finished workmanship' of the Japanese matchlocks they saw in Uraga, as well as appreciated the rice wine sake which some of the officers considered 'quite palatable'. Furthermore, Preble admired some of the textiles and lacquerware given to the Americans, which in his opinion were 'far superior' to those produced by the Chinese. All these items involved technologies which were quite complex, but the Japanese excelled in them. It is no surprise that swordsmiths sometimes had backgrounds in gunmaking. Sake breweries were quite mechanised and were not unlike factories. Similarly, the manufacture of silk cloth involved the development of sophisticated looms such as the treadle-operated tall loom (takahata), first brought into Japan from China in the late 16th century. This reminds us that care needs to be taken when evaluating indigenous capabilities in science and technology.

The Japanese were not always impressed by the marvels of US technology revealed to them. On an official visit to San Francisco in 1860, the scholar of Dutch studies and leading proponent of Westernisation, Fukuzawa Yukichi, found 'there was nothing really new' and observed that Americans wasted a lot of iron which would have been keenly sought after in Japan. Japanese attitudes to waste management, whether it be of human waste or metal, suggest that technology should be evaluated in terms of how it satisfies local needs and requirements as much against world's 'best practice'. Technology is not always science-based, and the appropriateness of technology can sometimes be dependent upon the cultural context.

The changed circumstances which the Japanese found themselves in the late 19th century and the threat of foreign invasion meant that there was now a military imperative behind the development of shipbuilding and other technologies which had not earlier existed. People like Fukuzawa would help Japanese science and technology meet the new challenge.

Further reading:

• Susan B. Hanley, 'Urban Sanitation in Preindustrial Japan', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, no. 1 (Summer 1987), pp. 1-26;
• Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Technological Transformation of Japan: From the Seventeenth to the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994);
• T.C. Smith, 'Pre-Modern Economic Growth: Japan and the West', Past and Present, no. 60 (August 1973), pp. 127-60;
• Daniel Lloyd Spencer, 'Japan's Pre-Perry Preparation for Economic Growth', The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 17, no. 2 (January 1958), pp. 195-216;
• Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1984).

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