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IO2 JAPAN IN THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY
indulging personal interest and following knowledge where it might

lead; increasingly, it also involved the subordination of personal prefer-
ence to official needs. For some men, Otsuki among them, this re-
sulted in a surge of pride that what had been considered idle interest
could now be put in the service of the country. Otsuki went beyond
this to modify his earlier dismissal of Chinese medicine, to criticize the
superficial preference for everything Dutch that he thought character-
ized dilettantes like Shiba Kokan,72 and to argue that the new learning
should be allowed to supplement the wisdom of the past where its
superiority could be clearly demonstrated. He even lent his support
for arrangements to control and monitor imported knowledge in order
to prevent its use by the faddish and superficial who might otherwise
gain a following by catering to the popular taste for novelty.73
Otsuki's response may not have been universal, but it is reasonable
to suppose that his was a frequent reaction among specialists proud
that their learning was at last deemed worthy of government sponsor-
ship and enhanced position. Private meddlers like Hayashi Shihei had
at their hand only incomplete and frequently out-of-date knowledge,
and generalists like Shiba Kokan might become so intrigued with the
mix of artistry and technology that they garnered from Dutch books
that they began to see the West as a distant Utopia of benevolence,
learning, and well-being'. Responsible officials, men who shared their
superiors' political priorities and took pride in their service to the late
feudal state, should be made of tougher stuff.
The new vision of Western affairs conveyed by better books and
punctuated by Western incursions presented a sharper challenge to
Japan. Earlier bakufu edicts had provided for supplying distressed
vessels with provisions to enable them to make a peaceful departure,
but in 1825 these were nullified by instructions for instant attack. The
bakufu now went Sadanobu's warning to Laxman one better:
Henceforth, whenever a foreign ship is sighted approaching any point on our
coast, all persons on hand shouldfireon and drive it off. If the vessel heads for
the open sea, you need not pursue it; allow it to escape. But if the foreigners
force their way ashore, you may capture and incarcerate them, and if their
mother ship approaches, you may destroy it as circumstances dictate. . . .
[H]ave no compunctions about firing on [the Dutch] by mistake; when in
doubt, drive the ship away without hesitation. Never be caught offguard.?*
72 On whom, see Calvin L. French, Shiba Kokan: Artist, Innovator, and Pioneer in the West-
ernization of Japan (New York: Weatherhill, 1974).
73 Sato, Yogaku kenkyushi josetsu, pp. 117ff.
74 Wakabayashi, Anti-Foreignism, p. 60. This is the "ninen naku uchiharau" (don't think twice!
drive them out) edict.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

IMAGE OF THE WESTERN WORLD 103
This institutionalization of a zealot's stand came at the urging of the

bakufu's director of the Translation Office. Takahashi Kageyasu
(1785-1829) was the eldest son of Yoshitoki, a distinguished mathema-
tician and official astronomer who had been commissioned to carry out
the reform of the calendar in the Kansei period, had supervised
Otsuki's translation of Lalande, and had sponsored a distinguished
student, the geographer Ino Tadataka (Chukei, 1745-1818), whose
geographical surveys of the north served as the basis for Japanese
maps throughout the entire nineteenth century. Kageyasu began with
his father's skills in Chinese and Japanese mathematics and astronomy
and succeeded to the family headship and the post of official astrono-
mer in 1804. He supervised and supported the exploratory travels of
his older contemporary Ino Tadataka. He mastered Dutch, translated
part of Kaempfer's history, and also worked on Manchu, English, and
Russian. From Deshima sources he obtained Kruzenstern's account of
his explorations in the north, and he also obtained and translated an
account of the Napoleonic wars. Thus it was from a background of the
most solidly international orientation available in Tokugawa Japan
that the head of the Translation Office proposed in 1824 that an edict
be issued requiring the immediate expulsion of foreign ships from
Japan. The ninen naku uchiharau, "don't think twice" edict stands as
the final extreme of the seclusion system. Takahashi's argument was
that unauthorized whaling ships were becoming more and more of a
menace. They were taking advantage of Japanese benevolence, and
the only solution was one of total separation and expulsion. Unautho-
rized landings and informal contact between Japanese commoners and
foreigners would inevitably lead to forms of subversion in which the
Westerners would take advantage of the credulity of ignorant common-
ers and prey on their curiosity to spread Christianity. It was wasteful
to mobilize large numbers of men to deal with occasional incursions,
Takahashi argued, and much better to follow what was actually inter-
national procedure: "When ships from a nation with whom diplomatic
relations are not maintained try to enter, blank rounds are fired from
the nearest cannon on shore. It is customary for those ships to leave
the harbor after being informed in this way that entry is not permit-
ted." The bakufu's order, when it banned entry by unauthorized
foreign vessels, added a codicil affecting commoners: "If contacts with
foreigners are covered up, the persons involved will be subject to the
most severe punishment when the facts come to light."
Takahashi's story is full of ironies. His personal relations with
Dutch residents at Deshima were entirely cordial. Hendrik Doeff,
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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IO2 JAPAN IN THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY

indulging personal interest and following knowledge where it might

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

This institutionalization of a zealot's stand came at the urging of the

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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