Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia · 1868
Was the Meiji Restoration made by ideas, guns or mistakes?
The seminar question: “Was the Meiji Restoration made by ideas, by guns, or by the shogunate’s own mistakes?”
Within ten years of the 1858 treaties the shogunate fell, as opponents rallied under “revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”. After Western fleets bombarded Kagoshima and Shimonoseki in 1863–64, Satsuma and Chōshū turned to modern arms, and the decisive battle came at Toba–Fushimi in January 1868.
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The struggle over Japan’s future centered on a court that had little power of its own. After 1860, young activists called shishi, ‘men of high purpose’, invoked the emperor against the shogunate. Most were samurai from Chōshū, Tosa and Satsuma, outer domains whose lords governed almost independently. Like student radicals in later revolutions, they assassinated officials they considered traitors and attacked foreigners they called barbarians. Whoever could direct the court in Kyoto could issue commands in the emperor’s name. Chōshū’s leaders gained influence there and pressed him to order foreigners expelled by 25 June 1863.
The short answer
- The emperor gave the opposition a higher loyalty. The court’s refusal of the 1858 treaty gave opponents grounds to accuse the shogun of defying the emperor. Ideas from the Mito school had urged national unity around the throne to strengthen the shogunate; activists now used them to challenge it. The emperor had no army, however, so control of the court at Kyoto allowed others to speak with his authority. That made the court a prize.
- Defeat turned the expellers into modernisers. Satsuma and Chōshū had demanded the expulsion of foreigners. At Kagoshima and Shimonoseki in 1863–64 they found that coastal guns and samurai swords could not stop Western steam warships. They still sought a strong, independent Japan, but changed their means: they bought rifles and ships and secretly sent students to Britain. Defeat made their leaders more realistic about what independence required.
- Chōshū recruited beyond the samurai. Founded in 1863, the Kiheitai and similar units trained farmers, merchants and townsmen alongside samurai in Western drill. By recruiting beyond birth, Chōshū gained a larger, more motivated force than its samurai alone could supply. Those troops helped reformers win the domain’s civil war in 1865 and beat a far larger shogunal army in 1866. The government had kept the rule of birth that Chōshū had broken.
- The shogunate’s late reforms alarmed its rivals. Yoshinobu was trying to strengthen the shogunate: French officers trained its troops, and a stronger central administration was planned. To Satsuma and Chōshū, delay could mean facing an opponent too strong to overthrow. His return of power in November 1867 offered him another route to leadership, as head of a council of lords. Their coup in January 1868 was intended to close it.
THE TURNING POINT
Toba–Fushimi, 27–30 January 1868. The palace coup of 3 January had settled control of the court, but its opponents could still reverse it. At Toba–Fushimi, south of Kyoto, the court gave Satsuma and Chōshū the imperial brocade banner. Fighting them now meant appearing to rebel against the throne, and several domains changed sides during the battle. Yoshinobu fled by sea to Edo and refused to continue fighting. Most lords declared for the court within weeks, helping explain the spread of red and grey-tan on the map and the concentration of hatched resistance in the north.
What it changed
Edo surrendered and was renamed Tokyo. Saigō and Katsu Kaishū’s negotiated handover of Edo Castle in May 1868 spared a city of about a million from siege. It became Tokyo, ‘eastern capital’, in September, and the young emperor moved there the next year. The new rulers acquired the old capital with its administrators and archives intact, making it easier to govern from that center.
The victors ruled through domain cliques. The new leadership came chiefly from Satsuma and Chōshū, with Tosa and Hizen as junior partners. Ōkubo, Kido, Saigō, Itō and Yamagata would dominate politics for decades. This experienced group could act together, but its predominance also caused resentment among outsiders, who called the system ‘clique government’.
The domains survived the war that ended the shogunate. Removing the shogun left more than 260 domains intact, including those of Satsuma and Chōshū. The government directly controlled only the confiscated shogunal lands shown in red; for soldiers and revenue elsewhere it had to bargain with lords. Its leaders came to see the domains as an obstacle to a strong state, setting up the more radical change of 1871.
The full answer, argued
Each explanation addresses a different part of the outcome. Imperial loyalty gave a small group of domains a claim to authority and made other lords reluctant to fight the banner. The shogunate’s errors, from Ii’s treaty without imperial approval to the failed 1866 expedition, gave the challenge an opening. Chōshū’s mixed-class infantry and Satsuma’s modern equipment helped turn that opening into victory over larger forces in 1866 and 1868. Historians give these elements different weight: Marxists stress social forces, Beasley lower samurai ambitions, and Totman the shogunate’s reforms and mistakes. A strong answer connects legitimacy, opportunity and organized force; without any one of them the outcome would have been different. The broader lesson is that a rival to an old regime needs both a claim to higher legitimacy and a force willing to act on it.
An interesting fact
The last shogunal holdouts established what they called the Republic of Ezo at Hakodate. In January 1869 its officers chose their leaders by vote, electing naval commander Enomoto Takeaki president; this is often described as Japan’s first election. Among his advisers was Jules Brunet, a French artillery officer who resigned from the French mission to remain with his Japanese students. Enomoto was imprisoned after surrender, pardoned in 1872, and later served the Meiji government as envoy to Russia and as a cabinet minister.
This is the study layer of Meiji Restoration and Boshin War, chapter 3 of Remaking the State: Meiji Japan 1600–1912 and Post-Soviet Russia 1964–2000; the full index of the atlas is here.
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