3. The Japanese Community of Shanghai: The First Generation, 1862–95

Abstract

Shanghai was the first city to which the Tokugawa regime sent a vessel of its own (in 1862) tentatively trying to see what the wider world looked like. It was the first city to have a Japanese consulate, the first to house an expatriate community in the modern era, and the largest Japanese community in China proper. In the first generation of the community's life, a full panoply of social and cultural institutions grew up with the community--schools, religious institutions, businesses and shops, various other professions, prostitutes and others at the margins, and the like. It was also the sight in which Japanese writers began early in the 20th century to place their fiction (though most of it is awful). This paper will paint the contours of that community which, in the 20th century, would explode in size and cultural depth.