The Tokugawa Restoration

On the 8th of July, 1853, as Commodore Perry’s ships sailed into the entrance of Edo Bay, the black clouds of smoke from burnt-coal trailing behind them, it was a grim portent that signaled the end for the Tokugawa bakufu, who had for the last two centuries mostly avoided all contact with the West (Gordon, 2009, 18-20). A year later Perry would return, and force open the once closed off Japan (Gordon, 2009, 50). Less than fifteen years later, the Tokugawa shogunate, which had persisted through an unprecedented era of stability in Japan’s history, would no longer exist (Gordon, 2009, 11, 61). The events that culminated in the overthrow of the Tokugawa regime are most commonly referred to in the West as the ‘Meiji Restoration’, as the ostensible

Other scholars view the events as being in direct continuity with the late Tokugawa period, and therefore reject the term ‘revolution’ (Swale, 2009, 1-2; De Bary et al, 2005, 1250-1251). This essay will analyse the events surrounding the Meiji Restoration, and its impact on Japanese society as a whole, in order to conclude that while the Meiji Restoration did indeed contain large strands of continuity with the past, the events of 1868 and the decades that followed radically altered the texture of Japan as a whole. This essay will also argue, however, that the term ‘revolution’ is as inadequate as ‘restoration’, as the transition from Tokugawa to Meiji was, while on the surface radical, borne out of pragmatism that came from Japan’s sudden vulnerability to the outside world. In particular, this essay will consider the role of Emperor Meiji, and the new ruling class, after the Restoration in the context of continuity with Tokugawa and earlier Japanese

As Marius B. Jansen has noted (1985, 3), the events of 1868 consisted of “little more than a shift of power within the old ruling class”; the samurai class who had presided over the Tokugawa shogunate were replaced by a new group of samurai, this time from the domains of Satsuma and Chōshū (Hane, 2001, 91). Furthermore, even though the abolition of the han domains in favour of prefectures can be seen as a radical act – all lands held by the daimyō were confiscated by the central government – it was nonetheless a superficial change in this period, as the former daimyō were appointed as governors of the new prefectures (Jansen, 1985, 10-13). Arguably, the fact that the abolition of the daimyō, which by extension meant the abolition of hereditary rule over Japanese lands (Jansen, 1986, 78), gave potential for a break in the continuity of Japanese peasantry being ruled over by an elite warrior class. However, despite acts such as this, which hinted towards a more meritocratic society, the new Meiji government was unwilling to truly break off all links with the former ruling class and instituted a new peerage system, the kazoku, which gave hereditary privileges to the former daimyō and nobility (Jansen, 1986, 78-81). Members of the kazoku were often appointed to the high level government positions in the Meiji period, and after the creation of the Imperial