Defensive Positions. The Politics of Maritime Security in Tokugawa Japan by Noell Wilson (review)

Maritime security is one of the top issues on the minds of political leaders across the Indo Asia-Pacific region, particularly as it pertains to the South China Sea. It is also the topic, in its early modern context, of Noell Wilson’s fascinating study of Tokugawa Japan. This book engages with the theme of maritime space, especially in its connection to coastal defense. Its author “reframes our understanding of early modern Japanese coastal defense, challenging its previous portrayal as a xenophobic reaction to Western pressure in the nineteenth century and instead casting it as part of a longer-term process, both shogunal and domainal, to extend military control to water spaces” (p. 13). Wilson argues that coastal defense has been largely overlooked in historical studies of Japan’s external relations because we think we already know the story—one that is defined by Japanese technological inadequacy relative to the various Western powers. Her study thus aims to reclaim maritime defense as a critical arena for understanding Tokugawa political development.

In pursuing this agenda, Wilson applies the analytical lens of coastal defense to the story of Japan’s engagement with the outside world, mainly with the Dutch, the Chinese, and the major Western powers. While the nineteenth century naturally plays a major part in the story, by reconsidering the first century of Tokugawa rule, she is able to reveal a regime that from early on was not just intent on extending control over land but also “interested in extending military control into proximate water spaces” (p. 5).

The book consists of two major parts. Part 1 deals with the development of Nagasaki defense as a complex system, from 1640 to 1840. One of the four so-called “gates” of Tokugawa Japan (in addition to the domains of Tsushima, Satsuma, and Matsumae), Nagasaki was the only one that was Tokugawa territory. This defense system aimed to protect Nagasaki from anticipated attack by Western ships, to enforce trade restrictions, and to protect the Dutch merchants in Nagasaki. In the three chapters that comprise part 1, Wilson traces the development of a fluid system of administration characterized by a shifting balance of power between the shogunate (primarily via allied daimyō and then its magistrate in Nagasaki) and domains. The burden of self-defense became increasingly concentrated in the hands of Saga and Fukuoka, but other domains such as Ōmura and Gotō were also charged with defending their own coastlines. In chapter 1, “Localizing National Defense to Nagasaki,” we see a shift from a concern with all of Kyushu to a prioritization of Nagasaki as the locus of attack, which was anticipated after the shogunate’s refusal to trade with two Portuguese ships in 1647. The fortified area of Nagasaki Bay was extended to more than ten miles. As a result, foreign ships entering Nagasaki’s harbor from the open sea passed through waters bordering several domains and faced a series of hillside garrisons lining the shore. Domainal forces were employed by the shogunate and acted under its authority but were delegated the authority—the Tokugawa monopoly on violence—to use force against foreigners.

After another Portuguese vessel was turned away in 1685, there was a century-long hiatus in the interest of Western powers in Japan. Chapter 2, “Smuggling and the Chinese Interim in Coastal Defense,” examines the reconfiguration of the Nagasaki system to focus on wiping out Chinese smuggling at the turn of the eighteenth century; coastal defense thus assumed a critical economic function. This is fascinating material, much of it new in English. Due to a combination of various Qing policies and the imposition of new restrictions on foreign trade by the Tokugawa, the climate became ripe for smuggling in the Genkai Sea in northern Kyushu. This illegal activity was able to penetrate through the “cracks” in the system caused by domains prioritizing independent, defensive action in areas that were clearly...