5th International Conference on Okinawan Studies
Imagined Okinawa: Challenges from Time and Space

Patrick BEILLEVAIRE (Ecole des hautes études en sciences socials)
Shimazu Nariakira's plans to open trade with foreign countries in Ryūkyū

In the Summer of 1857, while the American consul Townsend Harris and the Bakufu were about to start negotiations for a commercial treaty, the lord of Satsuma, Shimazu Nariakira, — a forerunner of the fukoku kyōhei policy — decided to open relations with the West. In his view, the coming treaty, which seemed unlikely to entail the opening of Osaka and Hyogo in the near future, could only reinforce the Bakufu's hegemony over the daimyō who, like the Shimazu, had no direct say in the central government. His plans aimed first at acquiring western ships and armaments, but also included the prospects of continuous commercial exchanges and the dispatch of students from Satsuma and Ryukyu to France, England and the USA.
As a dependency of Satsuma escaping the Bakufu's surveillance, the kingdom of Ryukyu was central to Nariakira's plans. Through his representatives in Okinawa and local officials devoted to his project, he thus turned to the French missionaries then residing in Naha and requested them to act as intermediaries with their government for the purchase, under the cover of the kingdom of Ryukyu, of two screw-driven steamers, a warship and a commercial ship, along with weapons and various equipments. Both the pressures exerted in the past by the French navy to open trade with Ryukyu and the treaty recently concluded between France and the kingdom made him confident that his trade proposal might be favorably considered in Paris. However, his sudden death in August 1858 (western calendar) and his de facto replacement by his half-brother and rival Shimazu Hisamitsu forced his agents to quickly retrieve the order and to put an end to the whole operation. In this presentation, I will examine a few points emerging from the comparison of the only French account of this episode with the abundant material left by the main Japanese protagonists, Nariakira himself, his special envoy to Okinawa Ichiki Shirō and Satsuma's zaiban bugyō in Naha Takahashi Nui.