開港期の「神奈川港湾中」

Abstract

This is a trial study of analyzing the space of the sea, which was indispensable for the port city in early modern Japan. With historical documents and reconstructive maps, this study elucidates the activity of the port managers of Kanagawa in the bay, where ships can anchor safely since medieval period. As a premise, this presents two historical facts. First, the executive council of diplomacy of Tokugawa shogunate grasped the whole area around the bay including several towns and villages as one region for regulating the trade. Second, 80 years before the opening of the port of Yokohama, the port managers demanded to change the location of stakes driven in the sea for remaining the area for anchoring. This indicates that the territory of the port managers included the sea not only their house, estates and unloading places. The drawing attached to the document which depicts the bay of Kanagawa including Yokohama village suggest their spatial interest. The main analysis of this thesis is about the tactical activity of the port managers around the opening of the international port city of Yokohama, which newly developed on the opposite side of the bay of Kanagawa in the middle of the 19th century. They tried to handle even the commodities (especially goods for daily use) carried to the city of Yokohama or for international trading. First, they tried to grasp the right to handle the commodities from Osaka, which had not been permit to them. Second, they approached the administrators of Tokushima domain and Ako domain where huge amount of salt was produced and proposed handling their produce carried to the bay of Kanagawa. The demand of daily necessities should have increased because of development of Yokohama and it seems to have been exactly the chance of expansion of business for the port managers. These activities of the port manager were evidence of the prosperity of the port of Kanagawa. In addition, this thesis present the hypothesis that the petition for change of the location of stakes with the drawing was roots of these activities. The port managers seem to have claimed the bay of Kanagawa as their territory which was necessary for reception of ships from all around Japan. Coupled with the regional administration all around the bay, they tried to enlarge the territory to the vast area including Yokohama. In early Meiji period, the port managers opened the business of handling the commodities in the city of Yokohama. One of the cru of that seems to be the built of reclaimed land and railroad from Yokohama to Kanagawa (towards Tokyo) which destroyed the estates and unloading place in Kanagawa. But we can find the ambition to expand their business because they had petitioned the government for the opening of that business in 1868 before the built of the railway. Focusing on the activities of the port managers in the bay of Kanagawa, we can find that the space of the sea became obvious and developed through the intervention such as stakes, regional administration and the birth of the city of Yokohama.