Ishikawa Yoshie
Hiroshima University. Ph.D. Student
Profound impact on Hiroshima Domain: how the arrival of Perry fundamentally changed the official document system
This presentation discusses the extracted records of official documents written in the “Imanaka Daigaku Diary” and manuals and analyzes the changes over time in the types of paper and formats of the document.
Hiroshima University Central Library has in its collection the “Imanaka Daigaku Diary” (51 volumes in total), written between 1807 and 1857. Because many historical documents were burned by the 1945 Atomic Bomb, this diary is a very valuable historical document of the Hiroshima Domain in the late Edo period. Moreover, since it contains many descriptions of earthquakes and weather, its contents have been attracting attention in recent years as "historical big data."
Imanaka Daigaku was the senior governor, "Toshiyori" from 1822, and managed the Hiroshima Domain and the lives of Lord Asano family while experiencing numerous natural disasters and economic crises. For this reason, the diary he left behind gives a valuable insight into the politics of the Hiroshima Domain and the lives of Lord Asano family.
In addition to leaving two versions of his diary, he made numerous manuals regarding official duties, as well as copies of the manuals of his predecessors. What is interesting is that the diary and manuals contain illustrations of the official documents, which allow us to understand the actual state of their official document system.
I argue that, by examining the details of the manuals and “Imanaka Daigaku Diary”, it becomes clear that the official document system, which had remained almost unchanged from the mid-Edo period until the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, was forced to undergo major reforms with the arrival of Perry. This observation suggests that the order of the Hiroshima Domain, which had remained unchanged for over 130 years, had fundamentally collapsed, anticipating the Meiji Restoration that comes 13 years later.
広島藩の公文書システムにおけるペリー来航の衝撃