Matsudaira Sadanobu and vehicles

[Jordan Sand]

Colleagues,

Can anyone help me find a source for Matsudaira Sadanobu's position concerning vehicular traffic on the highways? I have read Kodama Kōta on the history of transport in the Tokugawa period along with a couple of related articles I found online. A few non-authoritative sources (blogs, etc.) state that Nakai Chikuzen recommended in his Sōbō kigen that the bakufu should permit wheeled horse carts for efficiency of transport but that Sadanobu rejected this proposal. His rejection is explained variously as because (1) he deemed it a luxury; (2) it would present a military threat; and (3) it would put porters in some post towns out of work. I am particularly intrigued by this last explanation, which accords with Constantine Vaporis's explanation of the continued use of porters to carry people across the Ōi River (Breaking Barriers, p55). I would like to see Sadanobu's own words on the subject, but I haven't turned up any print source either recording or discussing Sadanobu's response. I start to wonder if all of the answers I have seen are merely conjectures based on the general tenor of the Kansei reforms and Sadanobu's conservatism. If someone on the list has published on the subject, please forgive my ignorance.

thank you,

Jordan

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Jordan Sand
Professor of Japanese History and Culture

Georgetown University / Kokugakuin University

[Jordan Sand]

Pardon, that should be Chikuzan (中井竹山).

JS

[Beatrice Bodart-Bailey]

Hi Jordan,

If you look at Engelbert Kaempfer's detailed description of travelling from Nagasaki to Edo in late 17th century Japan (in my Kaempfer's Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed, Hawai'i UP, 1999) you'll find relative few stretches a cart with horses could have been used. Moreover, the cost of the upkeep of the highways would increase dramatically considering the damage the wheels would have caused. As it was, some sections between Mishima and Hakone were so easily eroded by heavy rains and usage that they were paved with cobble stones. Very painful in a cart with no springs, as would be other parts of the road. Some sections were so steep that even horses with riders could not manage and those with no right to the use of a palanquin (norimono) were carried up and down mountains in what practically consisted "of no more than the round bottom of a basket, with two handles running up to the height of the small roof" (p. 246).

There was, moreover, the idea that shortening the time required to approach Edo would be dangerous as it would not permit the bakufu sufficient preparations to stop someone considered dangerous. For this reason, only cargo boats were permitted to approach Edo along the sea route. Daimyo processions had to take the slower and less comfortable route by land. For the same reason, a speedier river crossing by boat or the construction of bridges with wide spans that would withstand floods were generally not permitted.

Best,

Beatrice.

Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey

Honorary Professor, Australian National University, College of Asia and the Pacific

Professor emerita, Otsuma Women’s University, Tokyo

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