Meiji Restoration

I

Introduction

Meiji Restoration, political revolution in Japan that overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate (military government) in January 1868 and replaced it with a new imperial government under the Meiji emperor. Leaders from the powerful southwestern domains of Chōshū and Satsuma carried out the coup with the help of pro-imperial court aristocrats and samurai (warrior nobles) from other domains. The Meiji Restoration began an era of modernization and Western contact known as the Meiji period (1868-1912).

II

Background

The Tokugawa shogunate (bakufu) had ruled over the various domains of Japan through a centralized administration in Edo (now Tokyo) since the beginning of the 17th century. By the 1820s the shogunate was faced with growing domestic problems. The commercialization of agriculture, the beginnings of industrialization, the growth of trade among regions, and rising household incomes had created great social changes in Japan. Although the Tokugawa rulers had imposed a class structure with samurai at the top, a flourishing commercial economy had produced a class of wealthy commoners whose affluent lifestyle and cultural pretensions challenged the social and political dominance of the samurai. In addition, bad weather, poor harvests, and severe famines in the early 1830s kindled peasant uprisings and urban riots throughout Japan.

Foreign threats soon followed these domestic troubles. China's defeat by Britain in the First Opium War (1839-1842) upset the Japanese ruling classes, who previously had viewed Western nations as minor “barbarian” countries. The treaty that ended the war required China to open several new ports to trade, which stimulated Western interest in neighboring Japan. After several unsuccessful attempts by Western ships to open Japan to international trade, American gunboat flotillas commanded by Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Edo Bay in 1853 and 1854 and forced the shogunate to end Japan's restrictions on contacts with Western countries.

In 1858 the Tokugawa signed a commercial treaty with the United States opening six ports and guaranteeing rights of trade and residence for Americans in Japan. This capitulation shook both the legitimacy and the authority of the Tokugawa shogunate. Not only had it failed to keep the 'Western barbarians' out of Japan, it also had defied the wishes of Emperor Kōmei. Although the emperor had only symbolic authority and no decision-making power during this period, his disapproval of the treaty moved opponents of Tokugawa to action. Disgruntled antiforeign samurai from many domains pledged loyalty to the emperor with the slogan, 'Revere the emperor and expel the barbarians.' Antiforeign loyalists attacked foreigners in the treaty ports and elsewhere, and in 1863 officials in Chōshū ordered its coastal defenses to fire on foreign vessels sailing through Kammon Strait near Shimonoseki. However, by the mid-1860s even many antiforeign activists realized that the superior military strength of the Western countries made expelling the foreigners by force impossible.

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The shogunate leaders realized they would need help to defeat the imperial loyalists. They tried to win support from the most powerful daimyo (feudal lords) by loosening the requirement that daimyo spend half their time in the Tokugawa capital at Edo and permitting them to build or purchase seagoing war vessels. Domains like Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa, and Saga took the opportunity to build up their military strength by purchasing Western weapons and organizing Western-style military units.

III

Restoration and Impact

When Tokugawa Yoshinobu became shogun in 1866, he tried to reestablish shogunate authority by modernizing its military forces and establishing shipyards and arsenals with the help of advisers and money from France. Yoshinobu also planned a new tax system and administrative reforms. Anti-shogunate leaders in Satsuma and Chōshū, fearing that these reforms might make the new shogun too powerful, decided the time had come to end shogunate rule.

In October 1867 the Tosa domain offered a compromise plan devised by Tosa leader Sakamoto Ryōma. The plan called for Yoshinobu’s resignation as shogun and recognition of the emperor as the paramount ruler, for the establishment of a bicameral national assembly representing both the daimyo and the samurai, and for the appointment of officials to the new imperial government based on merit rather than domain affiliation. A month later Yoshinobu accepted this plan, but Satsuma leaders, allied with a group of court nobles led by Iwakura Tomomi, saw the opportunity to abolish all remnants of the shogunate structure and confiscate the Tokugawa territorial lands.

On January 3, 1868, forces from Satsuma, Chōshū, and other anti-shogunate domains seized the imperial palace with the help of pro-imperial court aristocrats. They abolished the Tokugawa government, ordered Yoshinobu to surrender his ancestral lands, and declared a new imperial government under the young emperor Mutsuhito (the son and successor of Kōmei), who adopted the reign name Meiji (Enlightened Rule). Compelled by his remaining supporters, Yoshinobu decided to fight, but his forces were quickly defeated in a battle on the outskirts of Kyōto. Fighting continued in other parts of the country until mid-1869, when the last pro-Tokugawa forces surrendered in Hokkaidō. Most of the country remained neutral throughout these battles, known collectively as the Boshin Civil War.

Although the political revolution was described as a restoration of imperial power, the new regime soon embarked on a radical program of political centralization, institutional change, and economic modernization. Its leaders, many of them young samurai from the middle or lower ranks of the class, were dedicated to building national wealth and power by adopting new ideas, institutions, and practices from Western countries. In April 1868 the new regime proclaimed its reform goals in the Charter Oath, promising to base its decisions on wide consultation, to seek knowledge from the outside world, and to abandon outmoded customs.

During the next two decades, the new government centralized the country's administration, instituted a prefectural system, established a system of universal primary education, and created a modern civil service bureaucracy. It also built a modern banking and fiscal system, initiated the development of modern industrial enterprises, strengthened the national borders, built a modern army and navy, and instituted a national constitution. By 1895 Japan had amassed enough military power to defeat China in the First Sino-Japanese War. The emperor died in 1912, ending the Meiji period.