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French Policy Towards the Bakufu and Meiji Japan, 1854-95. By RICHARD Sims. Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library-Curzon Press, 1998. vi, 394 pp. $48.00.
Richard Sims has revised and published a thesis he wrote years ago that fills a gap in the historiography about French policy towards Japan in the nineteenth century. This book offers a chronological assessment of the most important issues in Franco-Japanese relations during that time, covering the establishment and enforcement of France's treaty relations with Japan, the diplomacy of Leon Roches during the final years of the Tokugawa bakufu, French influence during the early Meiji period, and the waning of French influence as Japanese foreign policy became more assertive. The book ends with an assessment of France's contributions to Japan's modernization.
Sims offers a number of bleak conclusions that focus on France's policy failures. He argues that French policy contributed so little to the "opening" of Japan that "[h]ad France alone been concerned, Japan would have remained in seclusion for many years to come" (p. 22). French policy tended toward caution, alignment with British policy and avoidance of positive initiatives. France became involved in Japan for reasons of prestige-to maintain parity with Britain-rather than to promote trade or missionary activities, and the French government's preoccupation with affairs in Europe kept Japan a low priority for France. Sims fills his account of the various initiatives abandoned or left unpursued by the French with "could have beens" and "what ifs," especially in the chapters that deal with the early Meiji period, and the cumulative effect leaves little room for doubt about French aloofness toward Japan. If anything, Sims may be guilty of understatement when he concludes that, in French policy toward Japan, "a great opportunity was lost through lack of imagination" (p. 303).
In spite of the book's bleak tone, Sims's detailed assessment of French policy provides a number of worthwhile insights. It offers a healthy corrective to monolithic views of Western diplomacy or imperialism. French involvement in Japan differed in important ways from British and American involvement, the French being less interested in trade and proselytization and, in a few cases, more supportive ofJapanese interests. Likewise, wide variances of opinion among different French ministers to Japan and frequent reversals of policy demonstrate that French...