From Failure to Primacy in the Pursuit of Commerce: Osaka, Kobe, and the Tōyō Trade, 1850-1930

At the turn of the twentieth century, maritime East Asia was a place where risk and opportunity could be found in equal measure. Japan’s international port system generated a vigorous exchange of goods, people, and ideas, but its success required key infrastructural development and support. By looking at Osaka’s position at home and in broader East Asian port systems, it becomes clear that although the port was opened to modern international trade as a direct result of Western imperialism (with the intent of opening Japanese markets to the Western nations), the port found success through the connections it created to East Asia and Japan’s growing empire there. Examining the port itself—its crucial relationship to the neighboring port of Kobe, its immediate hinterland, and its extensive riverine and coastal shipping—reveals that Osaka’s relatively poor performance as a treaty port for Western trade helped launch its role as the primary maritime hub in Japan’s empire.

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About the speaker:

Catherine L. Phipps is the author of Empires on the Waterfront: Japan’s Ports and Power, 1858-1899 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2015) and the editor of Meiji Japan in Global History (Routledge, 2022). She received her Ph.D. at Duke University in 2006 and is Associate professor of East Asian History at the University of Memphis. She currently serves as a board member of the Association for Asian Studies and the chair of its Council of Conferences. Her current research projects examine modern Japan in global perspective, Japanes war reportage during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, and the maritime-based linkages between the industrial port city of Osaka and the development of Japan’s empire in Asia.