Was the Tokugawa order already collapsing before 1853?

The short answer

• Sekigahara settled who ruled and left the losers in place. Victory at Sekigahara left Ieyasu with enemies he had not destroyed. The Mōri of Chōshū lost most of their eight provinces but kept two, while the Shimazu retained their whole Satsuma domain in the far southwest. Both remained armed on the rim. Over 250 years their grievances endured, and distance gave them room to build armies and treasuries beyond close shogunal inspection. The peace settlement thus left potential rebels where the centre would find them difficult to control.
• Alternate attendance bought loyalty by draining the lords. A lord contemplating rebellion had to reckon with the expense of alternate attendance. From 1635 each daimyo travelled to Edo every other year with a large retinue and kept his wife and heir there permanently. Maintaining the journeys and mansions absorbed a large share of domain revenue. The traffic also supported roads, inns and a national market, helping Edo become one of the world’s largest cities. The political safeguard came at a financial cost: domains borrowed from merchants and had less money available for defence.
• A divided state had no national army or tax. Preventing another internal war and resisting a foreign navy called for different powers. The shogun taxed his own lands, while each daimyo retained his samurai and rice tax; no institution could raise money from all Japan or command all its soldiers. Even a limited attempt at centralization met resistance. In 1843 Mizuno Tadakuni tried to bring land around Edo and Osaka under direct shogunal control, but affected lords and bannermen forced him out within months. The government could not readily reorganize even its heartland.
• Controlled contact gave knowledge without power. Dejima, Dutch reports and scholars of Dutch learning connected Japanese elites to Western science and news of war. By the 1840s officials knew how Britain had defeated China and what steam warships could do, giving Japan’s rulers an early understanding of the danger compared with much of Asia. Acting on it was another matter. Building a navy required money and soldiers that belonged to the domains, and the shogunate lacked machinery to draw them together.

What it changed

Caution replaced preparation. The government responded to the Chinese crisis chiefly by avoiding a confrontation. It offered foreign ships fuel and water after 1842, yet rejected a Dutch royal letter in 1844 urging Japan to open on its own terms. Some coastal batteries were built; a navy and national tax did not follow. Thus Perry’s arrival in 1853 found the shogunate with the same divided machinery it had faced the crisis with in 1842.

An emperor-centred nationalism was already taking shape. How could Japan unite against the West? Mito scholars, especially Aizawa Seishisai, looked to spiritual unity around the emperor and coined the slogan of ‘revering the emperor and expelling the barbarians’. They meant to strengthen the shogunate. Yet their argument gave the emperor a prior claim on loyalty, and within twenty years opponents would use it against the Tokugawa house.

The rim domains reformed their finances first. Satsuma and Chōshū found money for change while shogunal reform stalled. In the 1830s and 1840s Zusho Hirosato reduced Satsuma’s enormous debts partly through a sugar monopoly worked by Amami islanders and trade through Ryukyu; Murata Seifū rebuilt Chōshū’s finances and trade. Twenty years later these outer domains could afford Western ships and rifles. Their financial repairs help explain why revolution would come from the map’s edges.