DURING THE BAKUMATSU and early Meiji periods, most foreigners in Japan lived under the legal system known as extraterritoriality. Extraterritoriality has been surprisingly little studied in Japanese or English. There is an extensive literature on the origins of the Japanese treaties and on treaty revision, especially in Japanese, but the framework and operation of extraterritoriality in Japan have been neglected. The late Professor F. C. Jones's work Extraterritoriality in Japan was written before the archives were open and did not use other available material which would have illuminated his subject. His book was far more concerned with treaty revision than with extraterritoriality. Professor Keeton wrote extensively on extraterritoriality in China, and in some of his later works touched upon the Japanese experience, but Japan was always incidental to his main field.

Yet extraterritoriality, and the way it operated in Japan, is vital to an understanding of one of the main motives behind the Japanese campaign for treaty revision. There is little doubt that the Japanese were anxious to recover tariff autonomy, but there is equally little doubt that the main thrust of the campaign against the Bakumatsu-period treaties was the desire to end extraterritoriality and its slur on Japan's rights as a sovereign state. It was not fortuitous that the Japanese were prepared to postpone full tariff autonomy until 1911 in exchange for the abandonment of extraterritoriality in 1894-1898.

This paper falls naturally into three parts. The first deals with the origins and establishment of extraterritoriality in Japan in the Bakumatsu period; although some of Japan's treaties fall outside this period, basically the system was complete by 1869. The second part describes the operation of that system after 1869, and the third outlines the Japanese campaign against the system, plus the foreign fight back.

It is worth taking a brief look at the origins of extraterritoriality. From ancient times, there have always been certain people who, although resident in a country, were not subject to its laws. Such people were “exterritorial”. Extraterritoriality is, in the words of Sir Francis Piggott, former legal adviser to the Japanese government, “. .. the government of these privileged people by their own authorities from home.”