What did Edo Period Japan think of China?

Legend has it that Kasumi Sonoda is actually Chinese.

When I was 3 years old, I came home from daycare and proudly told my father, “I’m Chinese, Daddy.”

Daddy raised an eyebrow. “No Babygirl, you’re Japanese because I’m Japanese.”

I lifted my chin. “No, I’m not Japanese. I’m CHI-nese!”

Daddy pointed to the name on the corner of my drawing from class. “Your name is Kasumi Sonoda. That’s a Japanese name.”

I pointed at orange scribble of a girl on the sheet. “Yes, but I’M Chinese!”

“Hmm,” Daddy grunted (a typical Japanese response.) He offered me his hand. “Let’s go show your picture to Mommy and see what she thinks of all this.”

I’m told, I could never be convinced I wasn’t Chinese—and I’ve been teased about it ever since.

While MY ethnicity may be debated, my characters have been entirely Japanese. However, my upcoming Novel (Code Named: Project “Sparkle Cup”) has a Chinese man with a mysterious past. To do him justice, I had to crack open a new corner of history: Chinese-Japanese relations in the Edo period.

Want to see my notes?

During the Edo period, the Tokugawa shogun enforced a policy called sakoku meaning “closed country” which GREATLY restricted contact with the outside world. 

China was one of the handful of countries that were allowed to continue to trade but only under strict conditions: traders needed a permit and could enter Japan only through a single port in Nagasaki.

There, they lived in a walled district called the Tōjin Yashiki (Chinese Quarter). Traders couldn’t leave without permission, not even to visit their own ships, and the only Japanese allowed inside were government officials and designated courtesans.

By the Edo period, Japanese sentiment toward China was shifting. In earlier centuries, China had been the “big brother” that Japan admired and borrowed from. It is impossible to talk about Japanese philosophy, technology, art, and culture without finding a thread leading back to China.

But by the 1600s, the Ming dynasty was collapsing, and the Tokugawa shogunate was rising like the morning sun. It’s easy (though not admirable) to see how Japan started viewing itself as the new standard-bearer of civilization and maybe even a little superior.

Still, records show that Chinese and Japanese scholars continued exchanging ideas in philosophy, medicine, technology, and art. To me, that suggests that there was still mutual respect and curiosity beneath the politics. 

For my story it’s important to note that the average Japanese person in the Edo period would never have met a Chinese person since they were forbidden from leaving the Tōjin Yashiki and very few Japanese could speak Chinese. I imagine that this would have created a sense of mysticism or “other” around Chinese people. (I made a special note of that as I develop Project “Sparkle Cup”.)

This was one of those “I’ll just look for five minutes” rabbit holes that turned into an hour of flipping through pictures on the internet. Sadly, I was unable to find any good, free photos to include in this post, so I drew a picture for you instead. 

Fun fact: both Japan and China had strict dress codes—but if you were a Chinese trader in the Tōjin Yashiki, you could wear whatever the heck you wanted!

So, while men in Qing China were being ordered to shave the front of their heads and wear long braids (the queue hairstyle), the traders in Nagasaki flaunted the flowing silk robes and elegant topknots of the Ming dynasty. I think of the Tōjin Yashiki as the #1 prettiest prison in the world.

Here’s what the Chinese thought was worth a dangerous voyage across the Japan sea:

• Dried sea cucumbers,
• Dried shark fin,
• Sea snail
• Metal (COPPER, silver, and gold)

Here’s what the Japanese thought was worth the torturous task of socializing with an outsider:

• Cotton
• Sugar
• Silk
• Medicine
• Books

Your Asian-ly ambiguous friend,

Kasumi Sonoda