Japan: The Tokugawa Shoguns and the Meiji Restoration

The Tokugawa Shoguns and the Meiji Restoration

The first European contact with Japan was made by Portuguese sailors in 1542. A small trade with the West developed. Christianity was introduced by St. Francis Xavier, who reached Japan in 1549. In the late 16th cent. three warriors, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu, established military control over the whole country and succeeded one another in the dictatorship. Hideyoshi unsuccessfully invaded Korea in 1592 and 1596 in an effort to conquer China. After Hideyoshi's death, Ieyasu took the title of shogun, and his family ruled Japan for over 250 years. They set up at Yedo (later Tokyo) a centralized, efficient, but repressive system of feudal government (see Tokugawa). Stability and internal peace were secured, but social progress was stifled. Christianity was suppressed, and all intercourse with foreign countries was prohibited except for a Dutch trading post at Nagasaki.

Tokugawa society was rigidly divided into the daimyo, samurai, peasants, artisans, and merchants, in that order. The system was imbued with Confucian ideas of loyalty to superiors, and military virtues were cultivated by the ruling aristocracy (see bushido). Oppression of the peasants led to many sporadic uprisings. Yet despite feudal restrictions, production and trade expanded, the use of money and credit increased, flourishing cities grew up, and the rising merchant class acquired great wealth and economic power. Japan was in fact moving toward a capitalist system.

By the middle of the 19th cent. the country was ripe for change. Most daimyo were in debt to the merchants, and discontent was rife among impoverished but ambitious samurai. The great clans of W Japan, notably Choshu and Satsuma, had long been impatient of Tokugawa control. In 1854 an American naval officer, Matthew C. Perry, forced the opening of trade with the West. Japan was compelled to admit foreign merchants and to sign unequal treaties. Attacks on foreigners were answered by the bombardment of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki. Threatened from within and without, the shogunate collapsed. In 1867 a conspiracy engineered by the western clans and imperial court nobles forced the shogun's resignation. After brief fighting, the boy emperor Meiji was “restored” to power in the Meiji restoration (1868), and the imperial capital was transferred from Kyoto to Tokyo.

Sections in this article:

Introduction
Postwar International Relations
Postwar Japan
Surrender and Occupation
Militarism and War
Industrial and Military Expansion
The Tokugawa Shoguns and the Meiji Restoration
Early History to the Ashikaga Shoguns
Government and Politics
Economy
Japanese Society
Land

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