Nagasaki bugyō explained

were officials of the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo period Japan. Appointments to this prominent office were usually fudai daimyōs, but this was amongst the senior administrative posts open to those who were not daimyōs.[1] Conventional interpretations have construed these Japanese titles as "commissioner", "overseer" or "governor".

Responsibilities

This bakufu title identifies an official responsible for administration of the port of Nagasaki, including the Chinese and Dutch settlements located there. This bugyō was also responsible for overseeing the port's commercial activities.[2] The numbers of men holding the title concurrently would vary during the years of this period. At any given time, one would normally be in residence at Nagasaki, and the other would be in Edo as part of an alternating pattern.[1]

Other duties of the Nagasaki bugyō included monitoring news and scientific developments in the West as information became available in the course of trade. For example, the Nagasaki City Museum preserves letters from the Dutch opperhoofd to the Nagasaki bugyō about the two-year-long sales negotiations and the purchase price of a portable Dutch astronomical quadrant imported into Japan in 1792, implying that the instrument was seen as important by both the Japanese and the Dutch. The details of the instrument, along with some elaborate drawings, were provided in the Kansei Rekisho (Compendium of the Kansei Calendar), which was completed around 1844. The compendium records the names of the instrument’s manufacturers, as inscribed on the telescope and on the pendulum box—G. Hulst van Keulen and J. Marten Kleman (1758–1845). Although that instrument once owned by the Astronomical Office of the shogunal government is now lost, drawings of a quadrant equipped with a telescope (Gensho Kansei-kyo zu) have been reported by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.[3]

Shogunal city

During this period, Nagasaki was designated a "shogunal city". The number of such cities rose from three to eleven under Tokugawa administration.[4]

List of Nagasaki bugyō

See also

References

Notes and References

  1. Beasley, William G. (1955). Select Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy, 1853–1868, p. 326.
  2. Screech, Timon. (2006). Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779-1822, p. 12.
  3. Nakamura, Tsuko. Imported Dutch astronomical instrument (1792), p. 3. IAU/Prague (2006).
  4. [Louis Cullen|Cullen, Louis M.]
  5. [Marius Jansen|Jansen, Marius B.]
  6. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Hasegawa Fujihiro" in
  7. [Stephen Turnbull (historian)|Turnbull, Stephen R.]
  8. Bodart-Bailey, Beatrice M. (1999). Kaempfer's Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed, p. 444. --Shigenori, 1622-1687.
  9. Bodart-Bailey, p. 442.
  10. [Ann Jannetta|Jannetta, Ann Bowman]
  11. Cullen, p. 141.
  12. Screech, p. 222 n. 81. later to become one of the kanjō bugyō
  13. Screech, p. 10.
  14. Screech, p. 13.
  15. Screech, p. 225n63.
  16. Screech, p. 19.
  17. Screech, p. 221 n43. Also known as Toda Izumo-no-kami Tamitake.
  18. Beasley, pp. 333-334.
  19. Beasley, p. 332.
  20. Beasley, William G. (1972). The Meiji Restoration, p. 100; Beasley, Select Documents, p. 337.
  21. Beasley, Select Documents, p. 331.
  22. British Library: "Handlist of Japanese manuscripts acquired since 1984" (Or.14948), p. 4.
  23. Beasley, p. 334.