Empire of Japan | Facts, Map, & Emperors (2024)

The last shogun

The arrival of Westerners in the 1850s added a new dimension to domestic politics. In July 1853 an American naval force commanded by Commodore Matthew C. Perry entered the fortified harbour of Uraga. Perry refused to comply with requests to leave, and he delivered the demand that Japan end its policy of isolation and establish diplomatic relations with the United States. The following year Perry returned with a much larger fleet, and it soon became clear that the shōgun (Japanese: “barbarian-subduing generalissimo”) was unable to protect Japan from this new wave of “barbarians.” Concessions were made to them in spite of the objections of the imperial court in Kyōto, and the foundations of the shogun’s claims to power—loyalty to and protection of the throne—appeared to be crumbling. The ratification of the Treaty of Kanagawa (1854), the Harris Treaty (1858), and other agreements with Western powers triggered a wave of antagonism from Kyōto; tensions that had been building during long years of peace and relative stability were suddenly brought to the surface. The slogan “Sonnō jōi” (“Revere the emperor! Drive out the barbarians!”) was first raised by men who sought to influence the shogunal policy, but it was later taken up by others who wished to embarrass the Tokugawa.

The stirrings of revolution did not immediately centre in distant fiefs but instead in the Tokugawa house of Mito, which had done much to advance Confucian scholarship. The Mito daimyo, Tokugawa Nariaki, made vigorous attempts to involve Kyōto in the affairs of the bakufu with a view toward establishing a nationwide program of preparedness. For his assertiveness, he was placed under house arrest by tairō Ii Naosuke, the head of the council of elders in Edo (now Tokyo). On March 24, 1860, a band of Nariaki’s supporters assassinated Ii and ushered in years of violence. Many of those who took part in the subsequent fighting were young samurai who directed their martial prowess toward both foreigners and rival clans. Their swords availed little against Western guns, but they took a heavy toll on their domestic political enemies.

The years which followed were a time of extremism. The shogunate, anxious to rally support among its feudatories and to help them to prepare their defenses, relaxed its controls and regulations concerning attendance at the court in Edo. In doing so, it increased the opportunities for intrigue and conspiracy. In many fiefs young samurai endeavoured to push their feudal superiors into a less cautious and more strongly anti-foreign position. However, it soon became obvious that expelling the foreigners by force was impossible. Each anti-foreign act provoked stern countermeasures and diplomatic indemnities which tightened the Western hold on the country. The Japanese were fully aware of the outcome of the Opium Wars in China, and after the bombardment of Kagoshima (1863) and Shimonoseki (1864) there could not be any doubt of Western military superiority. Thereafter, slogans advocating antagonism and exclusion toward foreigners were used chiefly as a means of obstructing and shaming the shogunate. Policy makers in Edo were forced to make surface concessions to the anti-foreign elements, but this succeeded only in arousing the hostility of Western treaty partners. After the arrival of British minister Harry Parkes in 1865, Great Britain in particular began to tire of the difficulties of negotiating with a bakufu which stood between it and the court in Kyōto. It began to consider ways of dealing directly with what it perceived as the centre of ultimate authority.

By this time, samurai in Chōshū (now part of Yamaguchi prefecture) in far southwestern Honshu had decided to act. In 1864 they orchestrated a military coup that installed a group of former leaders of the anti-foreign movement into the inner council of the daimyo of Chōshū. These men were no longer blindly xenophobic. A group that came to be known as the Chōshū Five had secretly traveled to England to study at University College in London. Among these men were future prime minister Itō Hirobumi and future genrō (“elder statesman”) Inoue Kaoru. Their goal was nothing less than the overthrow of the shogunate and the creation of a new regime with the emperor at its head. They developed militia units that used Western training methods and weapons and included commoners alongside samurai. Discontented samurai from other domains flocked to Chōshū, and the fief became a centre of anti-Tokugawa resistance. In 1866, believing that the shogun was attempting to enlist French aid to create a centralized despotic government, Chōshū allied itself with Satsuma, the dominant feudal domain in Kyushu.

In 1866 the Tokugawa mobilized a large force in an attempt to crush Chōshū, but the daimyo of Hiroshima—the domain that was to be the staging area of the invasion—openly defied the shogun and refused to contribute troops. The punitive expedition was a disaster for the Tokugawa. Despite being significantly outnumbered, the Chōshū rebels demonstrated the superiority of Western weapons and tactics and delivered an embarrassing defeat to the shogunate. The death of the child shogun Iemochi in August 1866 allowed the Tokugawa to negotiate a face-saving truce with Chōshū, but the damage to the prestige of the shogunate had already been done.

Hitotsubashi Keiki, the son of Tokugawa Nariaki, was elevated to the shogunate as Tokugawa Yoshinobu. Yoshinobu was fully aware of his precarious position as well as the pressing need for national unity in the face of the West. He spurned suggestions from his advisers that he seek French help to put down the insurrection. When the lord of the domain of Tosa urged him to resign, Yoshinobu complied. He knew that it would be folly to risk yet another assault on Chōshū and Satsuma, and he was confident that he, as lord of eastern Japan, would emerge as a powerful force in whatever new political structure should develop.

The enemies of the last shogun were not to be put off so quickly, however. The young Meiji emperor, who had succeeded to the throne in 1867, was guided by the counsel of several nobles who were in close contact with the leaders of Chōshū and Satsuma. Yoshinobu found himself maneuvered into a choice between surrendering his lands, which would delegitimize him to his vassals, or appearing disobedient, which would justify punitive measures. Seeing no other choice, Yoshinobu launched an attack on Kyōto, only to be defeated. Troops from Satsuma, Chōshū, and Tosa, now marching as the imperial army, advanced on Edo, which surrendered without bloodshed. Fighting continued to the north until the summer of 1869, but the Tokugawa cause was doomed. The principal lords were summoned to the imperial palace in Kyōto in January 1868 to hear a proclamation announcing the restoration of imperial rule. Later that year the capital was moved to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo, and the building of the modern state began.