Horses and Hostlers in the Making of a Japanese Foreign Settlement

Yokohama, Japan’s most important nineteenth century treaty port, has been examined from various angles: as a site of transmission of goods, practices, and ideas; as a site of international connections between Japanese and Westerners; as an instance of Western imperialism, the site for the implementation and reinforcement of legally sanctioned inequality; and as a place of resistance, where indigenous efforts to resist this imperialism were carried out. This chapter focuses on the sociality and materiality of the treaty port through an examination of horses during the years 1853–1874. Horses, this chapter argues, were crucial in the formation and establishment of treaty ports like Yokohama, both at a material and at a symbolic level.