The Meiji Restoration: Significance and Implications

Tokugawa’s Policy of Seclusion (Sakoku)

- Never intended to isolate Japan
1. Foreign relations with Asia thrived
5,500 Chinese ships visited Nagasaki
Korean Ships via Tsushima
Ryukyu
Dutch ships (Only allowed to trade in Dejima)
- Foreign knowledge came through Dutch Studies
- Western books only allowed by 1720
- Translations of western treatises on astronomy, chemistry, geography, mathematics,
physics, metallurgy, ballistics, military tactics
Other Notes:
- Sakoku was seen more symbol than fact
- Had western knowledge through Dutch Studies

Western Imperialism
- Russians in Northern Japan in 1790s
- British in China and acquisition of Hong Kong after the Opium War(1839-1842)
- US Expedition to Japan headed by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1852
- July 8 1853 Commodore Perry arrived off the coast of Edo with demands for treaty
relations

The Debate on Modernization and Foreign Trade

1. Joi = Opposed to the western powers/EXPEL THE BARBARIANS
- Aizawa Seishisai and Confucianists
- Cult of Christianity = Ideological and Cultural Threat
- Response = Kokutai

2. Kaikoku = Open Country

- Based on Dutch Learning
- Sakuma Shozan (1811-1864) = “Japanese Spirit, Western Technique)
- To look beyond Confucian scholarship
 - Preserve traditional ethical values, adopt Western technology

Bakufu’s Response to Perry’s Demands

1. Bakufu’s consensus style of decision-making

- Daimyo were consulted
- Sign of indecisiveness
2. Kanagawa Treaty of Friendship signed on March 31 1854
- Two ports were opened
- US consular agent to reside in Shimoda
- Kanagawa Treaty was signed under threat of force
3. Similar treaties with Britain, Russia, Holland were concluded (Harris Treaty)
4. Asking for more concessions, Harris treaty was signed on On July 29, 1858
- Additional trading ports
- Lower Japanese tariffs
- System of Extraterritoriality

Events Leading to the Fall of the Bakufu

1. Declining authority of the shogunate
- After Ii Naosuke’s assasination
- Union of the Imperial Court and Bakufu (with concessions)
- Deference to the imperial court on national policies

2. Defiance of Choshu and Satsuma domains

- Choshu and Satsuma’s anti-Tokugawa customs
Other Notes
- Choshu and Satsuma had an unusually large amount of Samurai
- Choshu and Satsuma formed a mutual interest in preventing a reassertion of Tokugawa supremacy
Fall of the Bakufu
1. Discontented lower rank, young samurai
- Search for new political and social order
- Group of activists called Shishi
- Yoshida Shoin’s influence on Choshu students (including Ito Hirobumi and
Yamagata Aritomo)
2. Formation of the Satcho alliance
- Staged a coup d’etat
- Seized the Imperial palace on January 3 1868
- Restored imperial rule, Mutsuhito as the new emperor

Japanese Civil War of 1868 to 1869

- Also called the Boshin War
- Choshu and Satsuma
- Samurai from Tosa and Hizen joined Satsuma and Choshu against the Northern alliance
- Meiji Emperor moving to Edo by the end of 1868

MEIJI RESTORATION
1. Revolution? A coup d’etat? Class Struggle?
- People either saw the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate as a coup d’etat or
a revolution or a class struggle.

2. The Meiji Restoration was

- From the strength of old values and institutions of the old society than from their
weaknesses (Albert Craig)
- Nationalist Revolution (William Beasley)
- Conservative “precipitated by the profound social and economic change and
pervasive discontent among all classes of Japanese” (Kenneth Pyle)

3. What were the immediate causes?

- Dissatisfaction
- The nationalism of the new ruling elite
- New ideas and revolutionary thinking
- Role of the populace
- Conservative political change

3 Great Nobles Who Led the Meiji Restoration

- Saigo Takamori (Satsuma)
- Okubo Toshimichi (Satsuma)
- Kido Takayoshi (Choshu)

Early Meiji Government

 - September 12, 1868, Prince Mutsuhito was enthroned as the Meiji Emperor
- Promulgation of the Charter Oath (April 1868) = Outline of Japan’s development and
modernization
- No elected prime minister until 1885
- Hanbatsu, Meiji government led by restoration leaders from Satsuma and Choshu
- Centralization of Power
- Promulgation of Seitaisho (June 1868), Establishment of Daijokan (Central government
with 7 departments)
- 1871, reorganization of domains into prefectures

THE CHARTER OATH

1. Deliberative assemblies shall be established on an extensive scale, and all
governmental matters shall be determined by public discussion
2. All classes high and low shall unite to carry out vigorously the plan of the government
3. All classes shall be permitted to fulfill their just aspirations so that there will be no
discontent
4. Evil customs of the past shall be discontinued, and new customs shall be based on the
just laws of nature
5. Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world in order to promote the welfare of the
empire

Influential Japanese Thinkers

Fukuzawa Yukichi - Modernization and Education
Yamagata Aritomo - Japan as a Military Power

New Political Leadership

- Mostly young people
- Loyal to their domain rather than to specific daimyo
- Open to new ideas
- From the old (lower rank) samurai elite
- Free of economic bias, no ties to the land, they had nothing to lose unlike in other feudal
societies