The overseas Chinese in seventeenth-century Nagasaki (Japan).

摘要

This thesis, written under the direction of Professor Philip Kuhn and with the guidance of Professors Harold Bolitho and Tu Wei-ming, traces the development of the overseas Chinese community in Nagasaki in the seventeenth century. In so doing, I challenge the perception of a single overseas “community,” proposing in its place the existence of a mosaic of separate subdivisions, namely, occupational subcommunities each divisible into linguistic/native-place sub-groups.; My examination of the evolution of these sub-communities reveals the emergence of a separate bicultural Sino-Japanese intermediate group within Nagasaki society, alongside yet distinct from, both the indigenous Japanese population and the China-born Chinese merchants who had no ties to Japanese culture or society. The presence of a discrete Sino-Japanese bicultural society in Nagasaki has not before been recognized.; The concluding section of the dissertation situates this Sino-Japanese bicultural group within the corpus of other Chinese bicultural middlemen groups in Southeast Asia. Their status bears similarities to the Sino-Javanese Peranakans in the Dutch East Indies; the Sino-Filipino Mestizos in the Philippines; and the Sino-Malaccan Babas of Malaya and the Straits Settlements. The Buddhist beliefs and cultural traits that the Chinese shared with the Japanese undoubtedly aided their position in Japan, but the linguistic abilities of Nagasaki's bicultural Sino-Japanese were far beyond the pidgin Chinese commonly associated with Chinese middlemen groups, and not only placed them in a unique position within Chinese overseas communities across Southeast Asia but more interestingly facilitated their penetration of the highest political and social circles in early Tokugawa Japan. The influence of, and respect accorded to, this Sino-Japanese bicultural group went far beyond the limits of the port city of Nagasaki as they formed part of a burgeoning élite community of intellectual peers active in late seventeenth century Edo.; In this dissertation, I argue for the emergence of a loosely formed, international intellectual society made up of Sino-Japanese Chinese interpreters on the one hand and Japanese intellectuals on the other, centered initially on Nagasaki and later on Manpuku-ji, the Ōbaku temple near Kyoto.