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- Convenor:
-
Marion William Steele
(International Christian University)
Send message to Convenor
- Stream:
- History
- Location:
- Bloco 1, Piso 0, Sala 0.05
- Sessions:
- Friday 1 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel seeks to recover ways in which Edo period commoners and samurai used natural disasters to create narratives of their past. Papers focus on the Genroku Earthquake of 1703, the Great Flood of 1742, and a series of natural disasters preceding the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
Long Abstract:
This panel examines ways in which natural disasters were used as historical markers during the Edo era. Historians of Japan often rely on political, military and economic events, including the reigns of shoguns and emperors, to indicate major breaks with the past and/or new beginnings. In addition to such national events, Edo era contemporaries commonly used natural disasters, often local or regional in scale, to punctuate their history. This panel seeks to recover some of the ways in which Edo period people, commoners as well as the samurai elite, used the adverse and capricious events that marked their lives to create narratives of their past. Moreover, the panel encourages historians today to pay greater attention to environmental events when constructing chronologies of the past. Beatrice Bodart-Bailey investigates the natural disasters that marred the final years of the fifth shogun's government, with particular attention to the Genroku Earthquake of 1703, one of the strongest and most destructive earthquakes to strike the Japanese archipelago. Although stone markers still today record the inundations of the resulting tsunami across the Chiba peninsula, this earthquake-tsunami calamity finds little mention in history books. Patricia Sippel examines the importance of floods in the creation of social memory in the Edo era. Special attention will be given to the stone markers and literary accounts that recorded the massive Honshu flood of 1742. M. William Steele introduces a woodblock print issued in late 1868 that chronicles Japanese history from 1853 to 1868. His analysis demonstrates the ways in which a confluence of earthquakes, floods, fires and epidemics in the 1850s and 1860s were used to mark the "natural death" of the Tokugawa regime. Philip Brown will invite the audience to discuss the ways in which environmental considerations can be used to construct a more balanced view of historical change in the Edo period.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 1 September, 2017, -Beatrice Bodart-Bailey (Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper deals with the natural disasters that marred the final years of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi's government with focus on the earthquake of Genroku 13 (1703). The paper will explore why this 8.2 magnitude earthquake, causing a change in era name, finds little mention by historians.
Paper long abstract:
Historical markers are essential for historians for they define the scope of their work. Since they are also political statements, their determination has been the preserve of power holders for the greater part of history writing. In Japan historical markers were generally set by a change in era name, and the case of the competing Northern and Southern Courts of the fourteenth century, each setting their own era names, is a case in point.
With the assumption of the Tokugawa regime, changes in era name became the prerogative of the shogun, and were often used to break the chain of unfortunate events, hoping to persuade the gods that a new era had begun. Thus the 8.2 magnitude Genroku 16 (1703) earthquake with a tsunami washing away whole villages along the coast of present-day Chiba, Shizuoka and Kanagawa prefectures and a death toll of over 200.000 people, resulted in a change of era name to Hōei. Yet natural calamities continued for the remainder of the fifth shogun's government, peaking in the most violent recorded eruption of Mt. Fuji of Hōei 4 (1707).
The change in era name to Hōei thus provides a convenient historical marker in dividing the government of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (1680-1709) into an era of increasing prosperity and social development peaking in the Genroku period (1688-1703) and the final six years of his government when the extreme conditions produced by natural disasters had to be dealt with. Traditional Japanese historiography, however, has divided Tsunayoshi's government in to the "sober" period of government under the control of the grand counsellor Hotta Masatoshi corresponding to the Tenna era (1681-1684) and the "corrupt" chamberlain government of the remaining period. The Genroku earthquake, though stronger and claiming more lives than the so-called Great Kantō earthquake of 1923, finds little mention in history books, and the disastrous 1707 eruption of Mt. Fuji has only recently received some attention though mainly from volcanologists, since a new eruption is due.
The paper argues that the traditional interpretation is based on "alternative facts" and that environmental facts are a more reliable source for the historian.
Patricia Sippel (Toyo Eiwa University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the importance of floods in the creation of social memory in the Edo era. Special attention is given to the stone markers and literary accounts that recorded the massive Honshu flood of 1742.
Paper long abstract:
Japan's Edo era was fraught with natural calamities. The Meireki Fire of 1657, the Kanto earthquake of 1703, the Mt. Fuji volcanic eruption of 1707, the Honshu Flood of 1742, the Mt. Asama volcanic eruption of 1783 and the Ansei Earthquake of 1854 were just a few of the most devastating. In between was a succession of other disasters, including near-annual floods along major rivers. Flooding, in particular, regularly disrupted lives and forced governments to expand their efforts at disaster relief and prevention. People recorded the events in written records and stone markers that sought to tell the story of a difficult past and leave a warning for future generations. One stone marker noted starkly after the 1742 flood: "Heaven has washed away all." This paper examines the importance of floods in the creation of social memory in the Edo era. It focuses on people's understanding of the massive floods that struck central and eastern Japan in the late summer of 1742, causing unprecedented damage and loss of life, including over 6000 deaths in Edo, Japan's political capital. The paper aims to show some of the ways in which contemporaries used floods and other natural disasters to inform their narratives of their past. Finally, it urges scholars today to embrace environment events as integral to their accounts of Edo era history.
Marion William Steele (International Christian University)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation analyzes a print issued in 1868 that illustrated events leading to the end of the Tokugawa regime. It seeks to demonstrate ways in which a confluence of earthquakes, floods, fires and epidemics in the 1850s and 1860s were used to mark the passing of the old order.
Paper long abstract:
In late 1868, a woodblock print chronicled the course of Japan's history for the years leading to the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate. Titled, "A Compendium of Events and Record of the Rice Market from 1853 to 1868" (Ka'ei nenkan yori bei sōba nedan narabi ni nendaiki kakinuki daishinpan), the print is divided into 16 boxes, one for each year between the arrival of Perry's black ships (1853) and the defeat of the Shōgitai at the Battle of Ueno Hill (1868). Each box includes a list of major happenings for that year and a pictorial depiction of one of those events. In 1853, for example, the box includes an illustration of a paddlewheel steamship. In addition to political and military events, the print depicts tsunami (1854), an earthquake (1855), a flood (1856), religious festivals (1857, 1865), epidemics (1858, 1862), and fires (1859, 1864). Rice market data are also given showing an abrupt decline in the buying power of copper coins in the years leading up to fall of the old regime. The print offers a glimpse into the way contemporaries understood the flow of events resulting in what historians today call the Meiji Restoration. Interestingly this contemporary view ascribes more importance to natural and economic forces, especially the destructive power of natural disasters, than to revolutionary samurai inspired by pro-emperor and anti-foreign (sonnō jōi) ideologies. Referring to this print and other visual and textual sources, the paper attempts to recover a sense of the "lived history" of the late Tokugawa years.