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History of Japan
Paleolithic 35000–14000 BC Jōmon period 14000–400 BC Yayoi period 400 BC – AD 250 Kofun period 250–538 Asuka period 538–710 Nara period 710–794 Heian period 794–1185 Kamakura period 1185–1333 Kemmu restoration 1333–1336 Muromachi period 1336–1573 Nanboku-chō period 1336–1392 Sengoku period Azuchi-Momoyama period 1568–1603 Nanban trade Edo period 1603–1868 Bakumatsu Meiji period 1868–1912 Meiji Restoration Taishō period 1912–1926 Japan in WWI Shōwa period 1926–1989 Japanese militarism Occupation of Japan Post-Occupation Japan Heisei period 1989–present
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Glossary This box: view • talk • edit

1 Background
- 1.1 Tokugawa political settlement
- 1.2 Seclusion and foreign encroachment
2 Fall of the Tokugawa
3 Civil war
4 Samurai revolution
5 Dissent and rebellion
6 Aftermath
7 Later depictions
8 Characterizing the Restoration
9 Notes
10 Bibliography

[edit] Background

Tokugawa Ieyasu.

[edit] Tokugawa political settlement

Main articles: Tokugawa shogunate, Daimyo, and Edo period

The Tokugawa Shogunate had exercised complete control over Japan since Ieyasu Tokugawa's victory over eastern and southern lords at the battle of Sekigahara in 1600. This control was formalized three years later when Ieyasu was granted the ancient title shogun. Ieyasu's betrayal of the former shogun's son, Hideyori,^[1] and subsequent policies served to strengthen central control from the Tokugawa seat of Edo.

A main policy of the shogunate was to neutralize all sources of potential power outside of itself. Peasants, already stripped of their weapons by Ieyasu's predecessor, Hideyoshi, were required to register at local Buddhist temples, and their travel between domains was strictly controlled.^[2] The emperor and his court were financed by the shogunate, but they were stripped of all but symbolic responsibility and over time effectively imprisoned in Kyoto.^[3] The biggest threat to the newly ascendant Tokugawa were his nominal peers, the daimyo, the hereditary warlords. Over time, the shogunate's policy towards the daimyo developed into a set of directives that kept them divided, poor, and alienated from their domains.

The houses related and allied to the Tokugawa, respectively shinpan and fudai houses, were given the most productive and strategically important lands, and would serve as the source for most future advisors and high officials. The most powerful of Ieyasu's opponents who survived Sekigahara were termed tozama,^[4] had their sources of revenue reduced or saw themselves transfered to entirely new domains, and as a class they were removed from administrative and political roles. For most of the Edo period, daimyo were required, under the sankin kōtai policy, to maintain lavish estates in Edo, to keep their families in those residences as hostages, and to themselves spend every other year in Edo.^[5] The policy served two principal ends: First, its attendant expense in terms of time and resources was a sever handicap on potential ambitions among the daimyo. Second, as a result of the hostage and residence requirements, daimyo spent most of their lives in Edo, severing emotional ties to their domains and warrior practice.^[6] Also required of daimyo, or the domain administrators in their place, were ensuring local order, keeping borders sealed, providing forces for military service (when necessary), and the provision of labor for engineering and public works throughout the seventeenth century.

[edit] Seclusion and foreign encroachment

[edit] Fall of the Tokugawa

Main article: Late Tokugawa shogunate

[edit] Civil war

Main article: Boshin War

[edit] Samurai revolution

[edit] Dissent and rebellion

[edit] Aftermath

[edit] Later depictions

[edit] Characterizing the Restoration

[edit] Notes

^ The great warlords "were pledged to guard his interest," but as Hideyori grew, his prestige at the imperial court and among defeated warrior houses rose. In 1615 Ieyasu, seizing on a perceived slight, laid seige to and, during a truce, Hideyoshi's Osaka Castle, causing the young man and his mother to commit suicide (Jansen, pp. 35-37).
^ Jansen, p. 57.
^ "The emperor's concerns were to be cultural, concentrated on the arts of peace," and the nobles "were 'to be diligent in their studies' and arrange guard duty around the emperor," and generally avoid physical activity and contact with the outside world (Jansen, p. 36). Over the course of the shogunate, the emperor would come to be a near prisoner of ritual in his palace: permission was required from the shogun or his deputy in Kyoto for the emperor to abdicate or even visit his own palace gardens (p. 98). Nevertheless, the evidence is that Ieyasu respected the imperial court (p. 36), and both the material well-being of the court and the tombs of former emperors were restored and maintained by the Tokugawa (p. 99).
^ "Eighty-seven warrior houses were extinguished," their lands and titles parcel among Tokugawa loyalists, but powerful daimyo were able to reach settlements with Ieyasu (Jansen pp.34-35).
^ Jansen, pp. 54-57, 128-34)
^ "Within a generation or two the system had transformed the military leaders of Sengoku times into cultured urban aristocrats trained to appreciate the finer points of the tea ceremony, cuisine, culture, and costume" (Jansen p. 56). Smith attributes much of the disgust of mid-raking domain samurai of the late Tokugawa period to the presumed effeminacy of the daimyo.

[edit] Bibliography

Black, John R. (1881). Young Japan: Yokohama and Yedo, Vol. II. London: Trubner & Co..
Gordon, Andrew (2003). A Modern History of Japan. New York: Oxford. ISBN 0-19-511060-9.
Jansen, Marius B. (2002). The Making of Modern Japan. Harvard. ISBN 0-674-00991-6.
Keene, Donald (2005). Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912. Columbia. ISBN 0-231-12340-X.
Satow, Ernest [1921] (1968). A Diplomat in Japan. Tokyo: Oxford.
Smith, Thomas C. (1988). "Japan's Aristocratic Revolution", Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization, 1750-1920. Berkely: California.