British Parliamentary Papers Japan

General Affairs 1856-1864
Relations between England and Japan were formalized with the ratification

of a treaty signed at Nagasaki, in October 1854, between Her Majesty and

the Emperor of Japan. The treaty was designed to foster peace, friendship

and commerce between the two nations. More important was the

commercial treaty concluded by Lord Elgin in 1858, during an interval in his

dealings with China (see volume 33). Many of the reports of Rutherford

Alcock, Her Majesty’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in

Japan after 1858, concern commerce, commenting particularly on the

Japanese economy, with emphasis on the silk and laquer industry. The

papers also contain information on such miscellaneous matters as the state

of Her Majesty’s troops in Japan, and letters communicating the decision of

Her Majesty’s Government on the sentence passed on a British subject for

riot and unlawful assembly.

General Affairs 1864-1870
The anti-foreign faction in Japan did not limit its activities to attacks against

diplomatic establishments. In 1862 a British merchant, called Richardson,

was murdered near Yokohama and the British chargé, Lieutenant-Colonel

Neale, was ordered by Lord Russell to secure compensation, if necessart by

force. These matters are dealt with in considerable detail in the papers in

this volume. There is also material on the British troops brought in to help

defend foreign settlements. Trade, especially in silk, continued to develop

despite these difficulties. The volume includes reports on the central silk

districts of Japan and the progress of that industry, as well as translations,

dating from 1869 and 1870, of various documents concerning Japan’s

domestic politics.

General Affairs 1871-1899
In the 1870s Japan’s silk industry was considerably extended (though a

report in 1871 by Adams, Secretary to Her Majesty’s legation in Japan,

showed that the quality of Japanese silk had somewhat deteriorated). Tea,

also, was an expanding industry and tea cultivation was extensive in the

Yamashiro district of Japan. Trade between Japan and Korea and the

general financial state of Japan are the concern of many of the papers for

the decade of the 1880s, while towards the end of the century the

improvement of railways and communications in general becomes a subject

of comment.

Embassy and Consular Reports 1859-1899
The Japnese Embassy and Consular Reports constitute seven of the

ten-volume Japan set and contain factual material and summary analyses of

progress in each consular district from 1859 to 1899. As with China, the

reports are of two kinds. The first, the annual series, consists of yearly

reports of British consulates and legations on the social and economic life of

the district in which the officer resided. The second, the miscellaneous

series, contain information from embassy and consular officials on subjects

of general commercial interest. These reports are wide-ranging in scope

and contain information on such matters as: the development of the railway

system in Japan and the character and cost of internal transport in general,

the shipping industry, taxation and land tenure, tables of foreign weights,

measures and money with English equivalents, the exports and imports of

Japan (emphasising the manufacture of cotton and the import of flannel),

the Ashio copper mines, Japanese regulations controlling the establishment

of exchange, the Japanese national debt and the currency of Japan. As with

China, the reports are arranged in chronological order and provide a

complete picture of Japanese commercial development in the nineteenth

century. It is to be noted that reports from Taiwan (Formosa) are

transferred to the Japan list from the China list as a result of the 1895

Treaty of Shimonoseki, formally transferring the island to Japan.