He was not alone in this belief. Both within Japan and globally, Yokohama was quickly gaining a reputation as “if not a land of oil olives and vineyards and flowing with milk and honey, at least a terrestrial paradise, where ‘all but the spirit of man was divine.’ ”53 Its reputation brought a flood of visitors and migrants to Yokohama, some just to look and admire, others to stay and try their luck at business and financial success. Francis Hall noted in his diary, “Our streets are daily thronged with travelers. Curiosity to see how we tojins live has brought them in such numbers to Yokohama.”54
The town’s growing fame was stoked by a vibrant media industry, transmitting information about the port in broadsheets, illustrated prints, travel and guidebooks, and public exhibitions. Within Japan, the opening of Yokohama stimulated an outpouring of colorful prints and guidebooks describing daily life in the port. Their emphasis was not on politics or violent confrontation but on the town’s prosperity and its exotic scenes of daily life. Overseas, word quickly spread of the rapid growth of Yokohama, of the adventure and glamour of life in a country still ruled by feudal princes, and of the quick fortunes being made there. In the early years after the opening of the port, much of the international print media focused on political issues, including attacks on foreigners and rumblings of war between Western countries and the various domains of Japan. But the ships arriving in Shanghai, San Francisco, and ports around the world laden with silk, tea, and gold were undoubtedly carrying a different message—one that was, by the middle of the 1860s, being reinforced by a flood of printed materials on the exotic pleasures of life in Japan.
In an era of unprecedented mobility, anyone able to buy or work his way across the water could find his way to Japan. While Shanghai and other China ports had the most direct connections to the Japanese ports of Nagasaki and Yokohama, new routes were rapidly opening up, whether from Europe via the new railway link to Suez and the Arabian Sea (the canal, which was under construction, would open in 1869); from California, thronged with new settlers and adventurers from the goldfields (regular steamer service between San Francisco and Yokohama opened in 1867, and the American Transcontinental Railway was completed in 1869); or from Siberia, rapidly developing under Russian expansionist policies.
A brief but symbolic meeting that took place in September 1861 illustrates the global currents and connections that brought people from across the world together in Yokohama. Alexander von Siebold was a fifteen-year-old German who had grown up in Nagasaki and was one of the few truly bicultural Europeans in Japan. His father was the famous Japanologist Phillip Franz von Siebold, and Alexander had a half-sister, Kusumoto Ine, who was Japan’s first female doctor of Western medicine. Alexander, who was in Edo with his father in 1861, records an evening he spent at the Yokohama Hotel, one of the prime watering holes for Yokohama’s merchant community. At the hotel he met Mikhail Bakunin, the aristocratic Russian anarchist who had just escaped from detention in Siberia and found his way via Hakodate to Yokohama. Bakunin, a man of extraordinary charm and self-confidence, had talked his way out of house arrest more or less under the noses of the Russian authorities, and he was now on his way back to Europe to pursue his revolutionary cause. Also present in the lounge of the Yokohama Hotel was Wilhelm Heine, a German artist and radical who had fled Europe following his participation in the Dresden uprising of 1849. By an extraordinary coincidence, Bakunin and Heine were old friends and comrades-in-arms, having manned the barricades together in Dresden. After fleeing Germany, Heine had taken American citizenship and in 1853 had accompanied the Perry expedition to Japan as its official artist. Now he was on his way to the United States to join up on the Union side in the Civil War. A few days later, Bakunin was to accompany Heine on his passage to America. A third companion on that journey (and most likely also present at the encounter described by Siebold) was Joseph Heco (Hamada Hikozō), a Japanese who as a boy had been shipwrecked while on a sightseeing trip to Edo, swept across the Pacific, rescued by an American ship, and brought to San Francisco. After receiving an American education and taking U.S. citizenship, Heco had returned to Japan in 1859 and was now a businessman in Yokohama. Heco probably helped Bakunin make his way to San Francisco and on to New York in the midst of the Civil War. Bakunin, always a friend of the oppressed, was tempted to join Heine on the Union side in the battle against slavery. Instead, he found passage to Europe and went on to become one of the most famous and charismatic radicals of his era.55
Their encounter illustrates the liminal nature of Yokohama’s urban environment. Four extraordinarily adventurous individuals were able to meet in the legal no-man’s-land of the treaty port, protected by the extraterritorial provisions of the treaty as well as by the town’s frontier mentality. They came from all corners of the earth and yet they were united by a multicultural outlook that transcended conventional notions of nationality. Neither fully Japanese nor under any other national aegis, Yokohama was a global space whose inhabitants—of whom there were a dozen transient sojourners for every longer-term resident—were united by a desire for adventure, new experiences, and financial gain. The Yokohama Hotel, incidentally, was a fitting setting for this encounter. A former brothel and a notorious hangout for adventurers and ne’er-do-wells, it was described by Ernest Satow in his diary as “a horribly noisy place, where people quarrel & fight, kick up rows till two & three in the morning, & what is worse let off firearms without caring where the bullets go to.”56
Most new arrivals in Yokohama—Japanese and foreign—were a good deal less colorful. They were tourists, merchants, entrepreneurs, artisans, and shopkeepers who hoped to benefit from the town’s vaunted prosperity—many of them people like Chūemon who dreamed of great new opportunities and who had the energy and restless drive to tear up their roots and try their luck in a new commercial space. Some failed and moved on. Others were persuaded by the same restlessness that had brought them to Yokohama to try once again for greener pastures. A few made large fortunes. Many more made a living, stayed, settled, and made of Yokohama a home for themselves and their families.57
Few of the new arrivals were able to hold on to a monopoly of any service: European, American, Chinese, and Japanese aspirants were quick to jump in and start up rival enterprises. In spite of the division of Yokohama’s urban space into foreign and Japanese quarters, in reality the divisions were fluid, and among the tradesman and artisan classes especially, there were no enduring national boundaries around business advantage. The first Western-style clothes-making store, for example, was run by a Dutchman called P. J. Batteke, who arrived in 1860 together with a Chinese partner. They hired several Japanese assistants, and one of them, Masuda Bunkichi, soon set up his own shop as a Western-style tailor. Before long, tailoring services were also being offered by Chinese immigrants. Best known is “Cockeye,” who began advertising his services in 1864 and who was still in business in 1918. As we will see, Chūemon himself opened a tailor’s shop in 1870.
Foreign women, meanwhile, could turn to Mrs. Pearson for dressmaking services. She opened the Yokohama branch of a Shanghai-based company in 1863, then started her own shop in 1866—by which time there were at least four other foreign dressmakers.58 But before long Japanese clothes makers, too, were getting into the business. Among the first was Sawano Tatsugorō, a maker of Japanese-style tabi socks who had been trained in dressmaking by an American missionary in Kanagawa.59
A Japanese, Chūshichi of Aogiya, offered laundry services to the foreign community from the time of the port’s opening. Watanabe Zenbei, a shopkeeper from Kumamoto who had previously worked in Nagasaki, opened his laundry service in the early 1860s. There was a stream running in front of the shop, and Watanabe put a large, round stone in the middle of it, which his workers used to beat the dirt out of foreigners’ clothes. When the British Twentieth Regiment arrived, with hundreds of men in need of laundry services, Wakisawa Kinjirō received a contract to do all the regiment’s washing. However, W. H. Smith, a retired army captain, still
saw opportunity in 1865, when he opened the Yokohama Washing Establishment, managed by two Englishwomen. They guaranteed that clothes brought in by 8:00 A.M. would be ready by 5:00 P.M. (except on rainy days).60
The first Western-style hairdresser known to have set up shop in Yokohama was a man called Ferguson, who by March 1864 was operating a “Hair Dressing and Shaving Salon” in the Yokohama Hotel. By June 1864, there was also a French hairdresser working in Yokohama, a former employee of the Parisian Salon in Hong Kong.61 While Europeans offered their services to the established foreign residents of Yokohama, the barbers to the sailors who passed through Yokohama were usually Japanese. According to the reminiscences of Ogura Torakichi, he, together with six or seven other Japanese-trained hairdressers, would go onboard the ships to offer their services. At first they used the traditional Japanese razor, but eventually they learned how to cut with scissors. By the end of the 1860s, they had their own salon in Yokohama, on the premises of a Chinese by the name of Ah Con.62
On March 4, 1865, T. S. Smith advertised his services as a “Sign Painter” in the Herald: “All orders neatly executed on reasonable terms.” This was a specialized service, but there were many housepainters among the Chinese community—and some, such as Ah Why of number 81, took on Japanese apprentices. According to the recollections of Itō Chōgorō, his grandfather Kametarō started a painting business in Kanagawa, and Kametarō’s son Kōtarō moved the business to Yokohama’s Kaigan-dōri, where he purchased his imported paint from a Dutch shopkeeper.63
By the mid-1860s, there were at least three Swiss watchmakers operating in Yokohama, including James Favre-Brandt, from the famous watchmaking village of Le Locle. Favre-Brandt, who arrived in Japan at the age of twenty-two, set up a business importing guns, machinery, watches, and jewelry. He was soon joined by his brother Charles. The Favre-Brandts were said to have been a major supplier of French precision rifles to the Satsuma and Chōshū forces that defeated the shogunate in 1868. James married a Japanese and never returned to Switzerland.64 In addition to selling personal watches, the Favre-Brandts also installed institutional clocks such as those at the town hall and post office. They trained several Japanese watchmakers, including Takeuchi Jisaburō and Mizuno Taichi, both of whom traveled to Switzerland to study at the Le Locle watchmaking school.65
Not everyone who arrived in Yokohama came in search of money. Many came to acquire some of the many forms of knowledge that were to be found there. English-language skills were to be a vital route to knowledge, success, and influence in the years that followed, and the schools run by Clara Hepburn and other missionaries were training grounds for many ambitious young Japanese. Hayashi Tadasu came to Yokohama in 1862 with his father, who sent him to Clara Hepburn’s school to learn English. In 1866 Tadasu was selected by the shogunal government to travel to England for further study, and he went on to become a successful diplomat and eventual foreign minister of Japan. Tadasu’s classmate with Clara Hepburn was his nephew Satō Momotarō. Momotarō went on to study in America, becoming a successful retailer and silk merchant in New York before returning to Japan to work for the Ministry of Finance.66 Kishida Ginkō came to Yokohama to be cured of an eye complaint. After his successful treatment by James Hepburn, Ginkō stayed to help Hepburn produce the first Japanese-English dictionary. He studied English with Joseph Heco and helped Heco produce Japan’s first Japanese-language newspaper, the Kaigai shinbun (Overseas news). After making a fortune selling an eye medicine based on Hepburn’s treatment, Ginkō went on to become a journalist in Tokyo and a successful entrepreneur promoting Japanese-Chinese cultural exchange.67 Other notable pupils of Clara Hepburn included future literary entrepreneur Hayashi Yūteki (founder of the Maruzen chain of bookstores); future prime minister Takahashi Korekiyo; future head of the Mitsui conglomerate Masuda Takashi; and one of Japan’s most famous doctors of the nineteenth century, Miyake Hiizu.68
Yokohama was also a magnet for artists, craftsmen, and entertainers. They came in response to the lure of new artistic media such as photography, to the excitement of learning new techniques, or to the exotic appeal of Japan as a place of unfamiliar visual wonders. Whatever the pull, they forged their careers in Yokohama’s vibrant but competitive commercial culture, and they measured their success in dollars and ryō.
Charles Wirgman arrived in Yokohama in 1861 as a correspondent for the Illustrated London News. Wirgman was said to be “nearly bilingual in French and German, and fluent in Italian and Dutch. He knew Greek and Latin, was able to write in Spanish, Portuguese, and quote literary tags in Russian, Scottish, Gaelic and Arabic.”69 He quickly established himself as a prominent figure in the Yokohama community, well known for his offbeat humor and eccentricity. His friend Ernest Satow described him as wearing “wide blue cotton trousers, a loose yellow pongee jacket, no collar, and a conical hat of grey felt,” all of which “gave rise to a grave discussion as to whether he was really an European, or only a Chinaman after all.”70 In addition to his work for the Illustrated London News, Wirgman founded, in 1862, a satirical magazine, the Japan Punch. The magazine, which was printed on woodblocks using Japanese techniques, lampooned the members of the small foreign community. Although Wirgman’s cartoons could be sharp at times, the magazine became a treasured asset of the Yokohama foreign community, surviving until 1887. Wirgman was also known as a teacher of Japanese artists, some of whom became prominent in their own right. Best known among them was Goseda Yoshimatsu, whom Wirgman taught beginning in 1865, when Goseda was only twelve years old.71 Goseda went on to become the first Japanese artist to exhibit in a Paris salon.
Wirgman’s close friend and business partner was the photographer Felice Beato. A British citizen born in Corfu and raised in Venice, Beato was one of the earliest war photographers, traveling to Crimea in 1855 to photograph the Russo-British-Turkish conflict. He went on to cover the Indian Mutiny and the second Opium War in China, where a witness described him as “in great excitement, characterising [a] group [of dead soldiers] as ‘beautiful,’ and begging that it might not be interfered with until perpetuated by his photographic apparatus.”72 Beato used the wet collodion method, which allowed for great sharpness of image and multiple prints from a single negative while requiring only a short exposure time—as little as two seconds in an open-air setting and ten seconds in the studio. However, the negative plate had to be prepared on-site, used immediately, and developed while it was still damp. As a result, Beato carried with him a dark tent as well as the chemicals needed to develop negatives on the spot, in addition to a collection of large, fragile glass plates.73
Beato arrived in Yokohama in early 1863, and soon afterward he and Wirgman, whom he had met and collaborated with in China, opened a studio where they jointly exhibited their work. They also collaborated on work for the Illustrated London News—Beato taking photographs, from which Wirgman created drawings that he then sent to London to be engraved for the magazine. In July 1863, Wirgman wrote of the popularity of their studio: “My house is inundated with Japanese officers,” who “come to see my sketches and my companion Signor B-’s photographs.”74 Wirgman offered sketches, watercolors, and oil paintings of Japanese scenes and people, while Beato sold photographs of Japanese daily life, landscapes and street scenes, as well as portraits and cartes de visite. Both Wirgman and Beato had strong journalistic instincts. Whenever possible, they traveled to the scene of dramatic incidents or military conflict and recorded the scenes firsthand. Like Wirgman, Beato worked closely with Japanese assistants, including Kusakabe Kinbei, who was to go on to become one of Japan’s most prominent photographers. Beato also hired a number of Japanese artists, who carefully hand tinted Beato’s black-and-white prints, creating exquisite and unique works of art that could be sold at a premium to foreign visitors and residents.
Many Japanese were also captivated by the medium of photography, and before long Beato had competition from several Japanese studios. Among the first was that of Shimooka Renjō, an artist who was drawn to pho
tography when he saw a Dutch daguerreotype in Edo. In 1860 he found work in Yokohama as an assistant to the American merchant Raphael Schoyer. While living with Schoyer, Renjō formed a relationship with an American photographer, John Wilson, who lived in one of Schoyer’s rental houses and had a part-time studio in Schoyer’s shop. In January 1862 Wilson decided to leave Japan, and Renjō offered to take over his studio, including camera, chemicals, and furnishings. He paid Wilson by giving him a set of eighty-six canvas landscapes illustrating famous places and scenes of daily life in Japan, which he had been working on for the past year under the tutelage of Anna Schoyer, Raphael’s wife. Each painting was approximately eight feet by twelve, and the entire collection could be combined into a gigantic panoramic scene, more than a thousand feet long.
Renjō struggled for six months to master the equipment he had purchased and the complex chemical processes involved in making high-quality prints. Wilson’s failure to teach him properly was not unusual. Foreign photographers generally did not want Japanese to acquire the skills that might set them up as competitors. One confided that he trained each of his assistants in only a part of the photographic process, to head off their acquisition of competitive skills for as long as possible.75 But by the end of 1862, Renjō had mastered the technique sufficiently to open his own studio on Benten-dōri, where, according to one Japanese guidebook, he was “able to offer much lower prices,” even though “his method does not vary in the least from that of the foreigners.”76 Renjō was to thrive not only in his photographic business (he eventually owned three studios) but also in a variety of other business enterprises, including a part share in one of the first Japanese-owned horse-drawn carriage services. In 1872, Chūemon himself, together with three of his sons and two grandchildren, was to sit for a portrait by Renjō (see chapter 4).
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