History of the Sea and the Japanese Early Modern State

This paper examines the transformation of Japanese early modern history through the perspective of maritime history. Particular attention is given to the historiographical shifts since the 1980s in the study of Wokou and the resulting re-evaluation of Japan’s unifying powers, namely the Toyotomi regime and the Tokugawa shogunate. By tracing the methodological innovation of Tanaka Takeo’s “history of the sea” and its impact on the study of Japanese foreign relations, this paper demonstrates how changes in the assessment of the sixteenth-century Wokou ultimately informed broader interpretations of the Japanese early modern state. It critically interrogates the theory of the Japan-centered world order, widely regarded as an orthodoxy in the Japanese historical academia. The argument advanced here is that while the adoption of a maritime perspective has indeed enriched the field, it has paradoxically risked reproducing an ahistorical glorification of early modern Japan as an independent “small empire” detached from the Sinocentric order. This paper therefore calls for a renewed critical historiography that transcends national and ethnic frameworks.