Re-visiting the Historical Context of Sino-Japanese Strategic Relations, 1400–1900

Chapter 6 tackles the question of whether these two troubled neighbours have ever been able to reach strategic bargains to allow peaceful coexistence. It re-visits the longer history of bilateral relations since 1400, the point in the modern era when there was a recognizably ‘Japanese’ state alongside its Chinese imperial counterpart. Befitting the evolving contexts of state formation, regional international society, and patterns of socio-economic exchange, there are four episodes that include mutual agreements about official relations between the two polities and regularized interactions between state and private actors from each side, as well as formal diplomatic accords or treaties. These episodes demonstrate that China and Japan were able to negotiate strategic bargains in very different historical contexts in their relatively long shared history. They are: (1) the establishment of official tributary relations at the beginning of the fifteenth century between the Ming dynasty and the Ashikaga Shogunate; (2) Tokugawa Ieyasu’s attempts to re-open relations with late-Ming China at the beginning of the seventeenth century (c. 1598–1616); (3) the semi-official revival of trade relations and regulations between the Qing dynasty and Tokugawa Japan between 1655 and 1800; and (4) the creation of modern, formal treaty relations between China, Japan, and Korea in the second half of the nineteenth century. It concludes by probing for continuities and disjunctures across the historical record from 1400 to 1900, asking what ‘lessons’ might be kept in mind, and what the significant socio-normative transformations have been in this strategic relationship.