The Politics of Defense in Meiji Historiography: Nation–Building and Representations of Nagasaki's Early Modern Defense

This paper examines how Meiji period scholarship represented the history of Nagasaki defense duty (which alternated annually between Fukuoka and Saga domains from 1641 to 1867) in a purposeful attempt to more fully integrate these two domains into the new Meiji polity.   Analysis of Meiji period histories of Fukuoka domain suggest that Fukuoka scholars frequently emphasized the success of the province's centuries’ long military service in Nagasaki, rather than the domain's losing (pro-Tokugawa) position in the Meiji Restoration of 1868, to rehabilitate the ruling Kuroda clan’s Tokugawa legacy.   In contrast, historians of Saga province, which comprised part of the anti-Tokugawa alliance that triumphed in the Restoration, used the legacy of Nagasaki service to bolster already strong claims to political and military influence in the new Meiji state. 

This paper focuses on histories of Saga domain’s Nagasaki service, particularly the work of Kume Kunitake (1839-1931), the son of low ranking Saga samurai who served in Nagasaki and one of the first Western influenced positivist historians of the domain.  Although Kume is best known for national accomplishments as secretary for the 1871 Iwakura Mission, he was one of Japan’s first professional historians and a critical figure in building what would become the Historiographical Institute at the University of Tokyo.  In spite of his commitment to a new “critical  historical scholarship” in the Meiji period, his exaggerated portrayal of the successes of Saga military reforms in Nagasaki revealed lingering personal attachments to his Tokugawa lord, Nabeshima Naomasa.  This paper analyzes Kume’s biography of Naomasa, focusing on analysis of Nagasaki service, to consider how Kume reconciled a strong sense of regional identity and loyalty with his commitment to the success of a unified national polity and historical objectivism.