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The Construction of Maritime Sovereignty in Imperial Japan

How was maritime sovereignty understood and practiced at the turn of the twentieth century? In contrast to the intense attention lavished on the Indian and Atlantic oceans, the practice of maritime sovereignty in East Asia remains largely underexplored. Drawing on Japanese, Chinese, and English sources, my research project is the first comprehensive study of maritime sovereignty in Japan and East Asia before World War II. It argues that the Japanese empire (1868-1945) adopted a highly flexible and pragmatic approach to maritime sovereignty against the backdrop of the evolving international environment. In illustrating “maritime sovereignty” as a fluid and contested concept, I draw attention to an important yet underexamined site in world oceanic history, where nationalism, imperialism, international law, and cartography converged. As contemporary maritime disputes in East Asia continue to attract international attention, my research helps place the present in broader historical perspective, while also calling for multilateral dialogue grounded in reciprocity.

Hayashi Shihei, an Edo-period scholar who advocated the strengthening of maritime defense (Portrait of Hayashi Shihei by Tomioka Tessai, Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 24, 2024

Map of Japan by the Survey Department of the Japanese Army, 1931 (Map Room of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, November 8, 2022)

Principal areas of interest

• Euro-American Nautical Surveys of Nineteenth-century Japan
• Japan’s Role in the Making of International Maritime Law
• Japanese Pelagic Fishing Activities During the Early Twentieth Century