In the 1880s, ordinary fishers and other commoners who were intimately familiar with the seas left the Japanese archipelago in search of bluer waters. Ending up in South-East Asia and Australasia, these hyakushō used their local knowledge of nature to navigate unfamiliar ecological contexts and create ocean-spanning infrastructures capable of facilitating their everyday lives. The resulting transnational connections gave birth to the ‘Arafura Zone’, a largely non-state space where empires had little influence and mechanisms of the global marketplace met with both human and environmental friction. This article tells a new story of Japan’s nineteenth-century global connections. It shows how the so-called ‘Opening of Japan’ was not primarily characterized by the temporality of industrial civilization and the spatiality of an international community of civilized nation-states. Hyakushō developed a new understanding of time and space based on the monsoonal climate and the geographical distribution of marine biota. As a result, they came to share a nature-centric intellectual common ground with those who were more indigenous to the Arafura Zone. Drifting beyond conventional historical narratives of globalization, Japan’s transnational encounter with the Arafura Sea forces us to rethink the possible forms that global connectivity might take.

中文翻译：

---

荒原地区的百兆：19世纪“开国”的生态化

1880 年代，熟悉海洋的普通渔民和其他平民离开日本列岛，寻找更蓝的水域。最终来到东南亚和澳大拉西亚，这些 hyakushō 利用他们对自然的当地知识来导航陌生的生态环境，并创建能够促进他们日常生活的跨越海洋的基础设施。由此产生的跨国联系催生了“阿拉弗拉区”，这是一个主要是非国家空间，帝国几乎没有影响力，全球市场机制遇到了人类和环境的摩擦。本文讲述了日本 19 世纪全球联系的新故事。它表明所谓的“日本开放”的主要特征不是工业文明的时间性和文明民族国家国际社会的空间性。百章根据季风气候和海洋生物群的地理分布，对时间和空间有了新的认识。结果，他们开始与那些更土生土长的阿拉弗拉地区的人分享以自然为中心的知识共同点。超越传统的全球化历史叙述，日本与阿拉弗拉海的跨国遭遇迫使我们重新思考全球连通性可能采取的可能形式。他们开始与阿拉弗拉地区更土生土长的人分享以自然为中心的知识共同点。超越传统的全球化历史叙述，日本与阿拉弗拉海的跨国遭遇迫使我们重新思考全球连通性可能采取的可能形式。他们开始与阿拉弗拉地区更土生土长的人分享以自然为中心的知识共同点。超越传统的全球化历史叙述，日本与阿拉弗拉海的跨国遭遇迫使我们重新思考全球连通性可能采取的可能形式。