From Boy Emperors to Business Opportunities

Abstract

This chapter reviews the articles on Japan featured by The North China Herald and Market Report as indicative of the connections which ran between the foreign treaty port communities in China and Japan. The treaty port system was pivotal in shaping Chinese and Japanese interactions with the West in the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. The treaty port system and its accompanying unequal treaties was first imposed on China as a result of Qing defeat in the opium wars, with a series of ports opened for foreign residence and trade; Shanghai rapidly became pre-eminent among these ports. The Shanghai press had its origins in the 1850s. Over and again in 1868, concerns are voiced in The North China Herald and Market Report that the Meiji Emperor was simply too young to rule; he is described as “just a lad” and therefore incapable of bringing stability to Japan.