Opening a Window to the West : : The Foreign Concession at Kobe, Japan, 1868-1899 / / Peter Ennals.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Ennals, Peter,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2018]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (264 p.) :; 5 figures, 10 maps

After more than two centuries of self-seclusion, Japan finally opened itself to Western traders and influences in the 1850s. However, Westerners were restricted to a handful of Foreign Concessions set adjacent to selected Japanese cities, where they could fashion a working urban space suited to their own cultural patterns, and which provided the Japanese with a microscopic lens on Western ways of behaviour and commerce. Kōbe was one of these treaty ports, and its Foreign Concession, along with that at Yokohama, became the most vibrant and successful of these settlements.The first book-length study of Kōbe's Foreign Concession, Opening a Window to the West situates Kōbe within the larger pattern of globalization occurring throughout East Asia in the nineteenth century. Detailing the form and evolution of the settlement, its social and economic composition, and its specific mercantile trading features, this vivid micro-study illuminates the making of Kōbe during these critical decades of growth and development.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Abbreviations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Setting the Stage: The Role of Ports in the Encounter between East and West in Japan -- 2. The Creation of Kōbe's Foreign Concession -- 3. Establishing Municipal Government and Services in the Concession -- 4. Forging an Economy: The Basis for Mercantile Trade -- 5. Finding a Mercantile Staple for Kōbe: The Tea and Silk Trades -- 6. The Morphology of the Settlement and the Development of a Pleasing Townscape -- 7. Life at the End of the World: Forming an Expatriate Society in Kōbe -- 8. Measuring Success in the Concession -- Glossary -- Explanatory Notes -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index