The Sino-Japanese War and Ethnic Unity, 1894–95

The story of how communities of Chinese arose and thrived in Japan does not begin in Yokohama. Yokohama was not site of the first large-scale Chinese settlement in Japan. That distinction belongs to Nagasaki, a port city on the southern island of Kyushu, which developed into a thriving Chinese trade base during Japan’s Tokugawa era (1600–1868). In this era, it was the only port open to direct trade with China and Europe, and thus served as an important conduit for cultural and economic exchange.¹ The Nagasaki Chinese population was largely transient, however, coming and going with the trading fleets