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, were the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, under foreign diplomatic and military pressure, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a Feudalism Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji era government. The major ideological-political divide during this period was between the pro-imperial Nationalism called and the shogunate forces, which included the elite swordsmen.
Although these two groups were the most visible powers, many other factions attempted to use the chaos of to seize personal power. Furthermore, there were two other main driving forces for dissent: first, growing resentment on the part of the (or outside lords), and second, growing anti-Western sentiment following the arrival of Matthew C. Perry. The first related to those lords whose predecessors had fought against Tokugawa forces at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, after which they had been permanently excluded from all powerful positions within the shogunate. The second was to be expressed in the phrase , or "revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians". The turning point of the Bakumatsu was during the Boshin War and the Battle of Toba–Fushimi when pro-shogunate forces were defeated.
Meanwhile, Japan endeavoured to learn about foreign sciences through ("Western studies"). To reinforce Japan's capability to carry on the orders to repel Westerners, some such as the Nagasaki-based Takashima ShÅ«han managed to obtain weapons through the Netherlands at Dejima, such as field guns, mortars and firearms. Domains sent students to learn from Takashima in Nagasaki, from Satsuma Domain after the intrusion of an American warship in 1837 in Kagoshima Bay, and from Saga Domain and ChÅshÅ« Domain, all southern domains mostly exposed to Western intrusions. These domains also studied the manufacture of Western weapons. By 1852 Satsuma and Saga had reverberatory furnaces to produce the iron necessary for firearms.
Following the Morrison incident involving the Morrison under Charles W. King in 1837, Egawa Hidetatsu was put in charge of establishing the defense of Tokyo Bay against Western intrusions in 1839. After the humiliating defeat suffered by Qing China in the First and Second Opium Wars, many Japanese officials realized that their traditional methods would be no match for western powers. To deal with Western powers on equal terms, Western guns were studied and demonstrations made in 1841 by Takashima Shūhan to the Tokugawa government.
A national debate was already taking place about how to better avoid foreign incursions. Some such as Egawa claimed that it was necessary to use the foreigners' techniques to repel them. Others, such as argued that only traditional Japanese methods should be employed and reinforced. Egawa argued that just as Confucianism and Buddhism had been introduced from abroad, it made sense to introduce useful Western techniques. A theoretical synthesis of "Western knowledge" and "Eastern morality" would later be accomplished by Sakuma ShÅzan and Yokoi ShÅnan, in view of "controlling the barbarians with their own methods".
After 1839, however, traditionalists tended to prevail. Students of Western sciences were accused of treason (), put under house arrest (Takashima ShÅ«han), forced to commit ritual suicide (Watanabe Kazan, Takano ChÅei), or even assassinated as in the case of Sakuma ShÅzan.
The American fleet returned in 1854. The chairman of the senior councillors, Abe Masahiro, was responsible for dealing with the Americans. Having no precedent to manage this threat to national security, Abe tried to balance the desires of the senior councillors, who wanted to compromise with the foreigners, of the emperor, who wanted to keep the foreigners out, and of the feudal rulers, who wanted to go to war. Lacking consensus, Abe compromised by accepting Perry's demands for opening Japan to foreign trade while also making military preparations. In March 1854, the Treaty of Peace and Amity (or Treaty of Kanagawa) maintained the prohibition on trade but opened the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American whaling ships seeking provisions, guaranteed good treatment to shipwrecked American sailors, and allowed a United States consul to take up residence in Shimoda, a seaport on the Izu Peninsula, southwest of Edo.
Fearing that the Perry Expedition would provide more American influence in the Pacific, the Russian Empire sent a mission to Japan under the command of Vice Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin, with orders to obtain a treaty at least as good as the one the Americans had obtained. The Putiatin Expedition first arrived in Nagasaki on August 21, 1853, one month after the Perry Expedition, and would eventually negotiate the Treaty of Shimoda in February 1855. In the midst of the Crimean War, the British, alarmed by the Putiatin Expedition and possible Russian influence in Japan, sent their own expedition to Japan under Vice Admiral James Stirling, with orders to find and destroy Russian ships and to reaffirm Japan's neutrality. The Japanese, cautious of the British after the Opium War and previous negotiations, signed the Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty on October 14, 1854, even though Stirling was never authorized to negotiate a treaty. The resulting damage to the shogunate was significant. Debate over government policy was unusual and had engendered public criticism of the shogunate. In the hope of enlisting the support of new allies, Abe, to the consternation of the , had consulted with the and , further undermining the already weakened .
In the Ansei Treaties (1854–1856), Abe then tried to strengthen the regime by ordering Dutch warships and armaments from the Netherlands and building new port defenses. In 1855, with Dutch assistance, the shogunate acquired its first steam warship, the , which was used for training, and opened the Nagasaki Naval Training Center with Dutch instructors, while a Western-style military school was established at Edo. In 1857, it acquired its first screw-driven steam warship, the . Scientific knowledge grew swiftly from the existing foundation of Western learning ().
Opposition to Abe increased within circles, which opposed opening shogunate councils to the , and he was replaced in 1855 as chairman of the senior councilors by Hotta Masayoshi (1810–1864). At the head of the dissident faction was Tokugawa Nariaki, who had long embraced a militant loyalty to the emperor along with anti-foreign sentiments, and who had been put in charge of national defense in 1854. The Mito school—based on neo-Confucian and Shinto principles—had as its goal the restoration of the imperial institution, and the turning back of the West.
The most important points of the Treaty were:
Japan was also forced to apply any further conditions granted to other foreign nations in the future to the United States, under the "most favoured nation" provision. Several foreign nations soon followed suit and obtained treaties with Japan (the Ansei Five-Power Treaties, with the United States (Harris Treaty) on July 29, 1858, the Netherlands (Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the Netherlands and Japan) on August 18, Russia (Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Russia and Japan) August 19, the United Kingdom (Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce) on August 26, and France (Treaty of Amity and Commerce between France and Japan) on October 9).
Trading houses were quickly set up in the open ports.
| Japanese foreign trade (1860–1865, in ) | ||
| 1860 | 1865 | |
| Exports | 4.7 million | 17 million |
| Imports | 1.66 million | 15 million |
The opening of Japan to uncontrolled foreign trade brought massive economic instability. While some prospered, many others went bankrupt. Unemployment rose, as well as inflation. Coincidentally, major famines also increased the price of food drastically. Incidents occurred between brash foreigners and the Japanese.
Japan's monetary system, based on Tokugawa coinage, also broke down. Traditionally, Japan's exchange rate between gold and silver was 1:5, whereas international rates were of the order of 1:15. This led to massive purchases of gold by foreigners, and ultimately forced the Japanese authorities to devalue their currency. There was a massive outflow of gold from Japan, as foreigners rushed to exchange their silver for "token" silver Japanese coinage and again exchange these against gold, giving a 200% profit to the transaction. In 1860, about 4 million ryÅs thus left Japan, that is about 70 tons of gold. This effectively destroyed Japan's gold standard system, and forced it to return to weight-based system with International rates. The Bakufu instead responded to the crises by debasing the gold content of its coins by two thirds, so as to match foreign gold-silver exchange ratios.
Foreigners also brought cholera to Japan, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
TairÅ Ii Naosuke, who had signed the Harris Treaty and tried to eliminate opposition to Westernization with the Ansei Purge, was himself murdered in March 1860 in the Sakuradamon incident. A servant of the French Minister was attacked at the end of 1860. On 14 January 1861, Henry Heusken, Secretary to the American mission, was attacked and murdered. On 5 July 1861, a group of samurai attacked the British Legation, resulting in two deaths. During this period, about one foreigner was killed every month. The Richardson Affair occurred in September 1862, forcing foreign nations to take decisive action in order to protect foreigners and guarantee the implementation of Treaty provisions. In May 1863, the US legation in Edo was torched.
During the 1860s, peasant uprisings and urban disturbances multiplied. A "World renewal" movement appeared, as well as religious festivals and protests such as the Eejanaika.
From 1859, the ports of Nagasaki, Hakodate and Yokohama became open to foreign traders as a consequence of the Treaties. Foreigners arrived in Yokohama and Kanagawa in great numbers, giving rise to trouble with the samurai. Violence increased against the foreigners and those who dealt with them. Murders of foreigners and collaborating Japanese soon followed. On 26 August 1859, a Russian sailor was cut to pieces in the streets of Yokohama. In early 1860, two Dutch captains were slaughtered, also in Yokohama. Chinese and native servants of foreigners were also killed.
The MÅri clan of ChÅshÅ«, under Lord MÅri Takachika, followed on the order, and began to take actions to expel all foreigners from the date fixed as a deadline (May 10, Lunar calendar). Openly defying the shogunate, MÅri ordered his forces to fire without warning on all foreign ships traversing Shimonoseki Strait.
Under pressure from the Emperor, the Shogun was also forced to issue a declaration promulgating the end of relations with foreigners. The order was forwarded to foreign legations by Ogasawara Zusho no Kami on June 24, 1863:
Edward Neale, the head of the British Legation, responded on very strong terms, equating the move with a declaration of war:
The two ringleaders of the opposition to the were from the Satsuma (present day Kagoshima prefecture) and ChÅshÅ« (present-day Yamaguchi prefecture) provinces, two of the strongest anti-shogunate domains in Edo-period Japan. Satsuma military leaders SaigÅ Takamori and Okubo Toshimichi were brought together with Katsura Kogoro of ChÅshÅ«, notably through the efforts of Sakamoto RyÅma. As the former happened to be directly involved in the murder of Richardson, and the latter in the attacks on foreign shipping in Shimonoseki, and as the declared itself unable to placate them, Allied forces decided to mount direct military expeditions.
In the morning of July 16, 1863, under sanction by Minister Pruyn, in an apparent swift response to the attack on the Pembroke, the U.S. frigate USS Wyoming under Captain McDougal sailed into the strait and single-handedly engaged the U.S.-built but poorly manned fleet. For almost two hours before withdrawing, McDougal sank one Japanese vessel and severely damaged the other two, along with some forty Japanese casualties, while the Wyoming suffered extensive damage with fourteen crew dead or wounded.
On the heels of McDougal's engagement, two weeks later a French landing force of two warships, the Tancrède and the Dupleix, and 250 men under Captain Benjamin Jaurès swept into Shimonoseki and destroyed a small town, together with at least one artillery emplacement.
In August 1863, the Bombardment of Kagoshima took place, in retaliation for the Namamugi incident and the murder of the English trader Richardson. The Royal Navy bombarded Kagoshima and sank several ships. Satsuma however later negotiated and paid 25,000 pounds, but did not remit Richardson's killers, and in exchange obtained an agreement by Great Britain to supply steam warships to Satsuma. The conflict actually became the starting point of a close relationship between Satsuma and Great Britain, which became major allies in the ensuing Boshin War. From the start, the Satsuma Province had generally been in favour of the opening and modernization of Japan. Although the Namamugi Incident was seen as unfortunate, it was taken not to be characteristic of Satsuma's policy, and was instead branded as an example of anti-foreign sentiment, as a justification to a strong Western show of force.
Naval forces from Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States, planned an armed reaction against Japanese acts of violence against the citizens with the Bombardment of Shimonoseki. The Allied intervention occurred in September 1864, combining the naval forces of the four nations, against the powerful daimyÅ MÅri Takachika of the ChÅshÅ« Domain based in Shimonoseki, Japan. This conflict proved inopportune for America, which in 1864, was already torn by its own civil war.
Following these successes against the imperial movement in Japan, the shogunate was able to reassert a certain level of primacy at the end of 1864. The traditional policy of sankin-kÅtai was reinstated, and remnants of the rebellions of 1863–64 as well as the Shishi movement were brutally suppressed throughout the land.
The military interventions by foreign powers also proved that Japan was no military match against the Allies. The sonnÅ jÅi movement thus lost its initial impetus. The structural weaknesses of the Bakufu however remained an issue, and the focus of opposition would then shift to creating a strong government under a single authority.
These conflicts led to the realization that head-on conflict with Western nations was not a solution for Japan. As the Bakufu continued its modernization efforts, Western daimyÅs (especially from Satsuma and ChÅshÅ«) also continued to modernize intensively in order to build a stronger Japan and to establish a more legitimate government under Imperial power.
This reversal encouraged the Bakufu to take drastic steps towards modernization.
Naval students were sent to study in Western naval schools for several years, starting a tradition of foreign-educated future leaders, such as Admiral Enomoto Takeaki. The French naval engineer Léonce Verny was hired to build naval arsenals, such as Yokosuka and Nagasaki. By the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, the Japanese navy of the shÅgun already possessed eight western-style steam warships around the flagship KaiyÅ Maru, which were used against pro-imperial forces during the Boshin War, under the command of Admiral Enomoto Takeaki. A French Military Mission to Japan was established to help modernize the armies of the Bakufu. Japan sent a delegation to and participated in the 1867 World Fair in Paris.
Tokugawa Yoshinobu (informally known as Keiki) reluctantly became head of the Tokugawa house and shÅgun following the unexpected death of Tokugawa Iemochi in mid-1866. In 1867, Emperor KÅmei died and was succeeded by his second son, Mutsuhito, as Emperor Meiji. Tokugawa Yoshinobu tried to reorganize the government under the Emperor while preserving the shÅguns leadership role, a system known as kÅbu gattai. Fearing the growing power of the Satsuma and ChÅshÅ« daimyÅs, other daimyÅs called for returning the shÅguns political power to the emperor and a council of daimyÅs chaired by the former Tokugawa shÅgun. With the threat of an imminent Satsuma-ChÅshÅ« led military action, Yoshinobu moved pre-emptively by surrendering some of his previous authority.
Following the Boshin War (1868–1869), the bakufu was abolished, and Keiki was reduced to the ranks of the common daimyÅs. Resistance continued in the North throughout 1868, and the bakufu navy under Admiral Enomoto Takeaki continued to hold out for another six months in Hokkaido, where they founded the short-lived Republic of Ezo. This defiance ended in May 1869 at the Battle of Hakodate, after one month of fighting.
Matsudaira Yoshinaga, Date Munenari, Yamauchi Toyoshige and Shimazu Nariakira are collectively referred to as 幕末ã®å››è³¢ä¾¯.
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