The Meiji Restoration (明治維新, Meiji Ishin; also translated as the Meiji Reformation]), referred to at the time as the Honorable Restoration (御維新／御一新, Goi(s)shin), was a political event that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji and led to the Westernisation of Japan. Although there were ruling emperors before the Meiji Restoration, the events restored practical power to, and consolidated the political system under, the Emperor of Japan. The Restoration led to enormous changes in Japan's political and social structure and spanned both the late Edo period (often called the Bakumatsu) and the beginning of the Meiji era, during which time Japan rapidly industrialised and adopted Western ideas, production methods and technology.
The origins of the Restoration lay in economic and political difficulties faced by the Tokugawa shogunate. These problems were compounded by the encroachment of foreign powers in the region, which challenged the Tokugawa policy of sakoku; specifically, the arrival of the Perry Expedition under orders from United States president Millard Fillmore. Under subsequent unequal treaties, Japan was forced to open to the West, bringing the shōgun's ability to maintain Japanese sovereignty into question. The Emperor's rebuke of shogunal actions led to the emergence of an ideological divide within the samurai class concerned with their feudal obligations to both the shōgun and the Emperor. Many lower and middle-ranking samurai became shishi ("men of spirit") who were committed to the Emperor's proclamations to expel the barbarians. Factional disputes within the domains led some domains to conflict with the Tokugawa. After some initial setbacks, the domains organised into an anti-Tokugawa alliance, and, led by Satsuma and Chōshū, they overthrew the shogunal system.
On 3 January 1868, Emperor Meiji declared political power to be restored to the Imperial House. The goals of the restored government were expressed by the new emperor in the Charter Oath. Subsequent Tokugawa resistance to the new government materialised in the Boshin War and the short-lived Republic of Ezo, but by the 1870s, the Emperor's authority was practically unquestioned. The new government reorganised whole strata of society, abolishing the old currency, the domain system, and eventually the class position of the samurai.
The abolition of the shogunate and industrialisation of society in emulation of foreign imperial powers led to backlash with the Saga Rebellion and the Satsuma Rebellion, but ultimately ended feudalism in Japanese society. The Meiji Restoration was the political process that laid the foundation for the institutions of the Empire of Japan, and would have far-reaching consequences in East Asia as Japan pursued colonial interests against its neighbours. The Meiji Constitution of 1889 would remain in place until the Allied occupation of Japan after the end of World War II.
Background
Political and social structure
In the Edo period, Japan was governed by a strict and rigid social order with inherited position. This hierarchy in descending order had the Emperor and their Court at the top. The shōgun, with the rōjū and daimyō below him inhabited the upper strata of society. Below them were various subdivisions of samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants. Historian Marius B. Jansen refers to the political organisation of the system as being one of "feudal autonomy". This was a structure of government where the shōgun granted extensive control to the various daimyō over their own domains to control their own jurisdiction while paying homage to him through irregular taxation, the seeking of permission for marriage and movement, and systems such as that of alternate attendance. The total population of samurai families in the 19th century numbered around 5–6% of 30 million people (1,500,000–1,800,000), among these families, roughly 1 in 50 was an "upper samurai" while the rest were divided mostly evenly between "middle" and "lower" samurai, with each division containing more subdivisions.
The influence exerted by the Tokugawa shogunate (bakufu) in contemporary Japan was built on the distribution and management of land. Split into domains, each domain was measured by koku, or the amount of rice a given area of land could produce per annum. By 1650, the shōgun directly controlled land producing roughly 4.2 million koku of rice, with his direct retainers, other members of the Tokugawa family (shinpan daimyō), and his vassals (fudai daimyō) controlling a combined total of land producing 12.9 million koku out of a national 26 million koku. The remaining 9.8 million koku (just under 38%) was parceled out between about 100 rival tozama daimyō, the descendants of those who had fought against the Tokugawa at the Battle of Sekigahara. Many of the strongest tozama domains were located in western Japan away from centres of power, with the fudai often controlling government offices, but with smaller provinces to incentivize them to preserve the system.
According to the Neo-Confucian tenets of bakufu authority, the system of hierarchy developed in bushidō encouraged a series of descending subordinations, but unlike in China, its adoption by the bakufu came to inform an ethic that was distinct from the structural organisation of the Tokugawa state; this allowed it to coexist with Western scientific methods. Historian William G. Beasley argues that there was a tension between this official state ideology that encouraged enlightened meritocratic rule and the rigid class structure that prevented the lower and middle ranking samurai bureaucrats from advancing their position. When exacerbated by foreign and domestic crises, and in spite of official attempts to begin promoting samurai to offices beyond their inherited position, the social bonds between these systems weakened, leading to reformist and revolutionary attitudes among the samurai. Merchant classes, that had been flourishing economically in developing mass culture and communication, were forbidden to translate their influence into political power.
Ideological currents
Beginning especially in the last quarter of the 18th century, a kind of Shintō revival was occurring alongside a growing interest in Dutch studies. Both schools occurred as part of a turn away from China as the centre of intellectual thought. But adherents to both movements were careful not to assert that their learning was in any way meant to upset the established political order. The work of the Mito School working primarily from the Kōdōkan, was especially important in the development of nativist concepts connected to kokugaku (national learning).
There were limits. When Hirata Atsutane went too far for the bakufu in reviving the political claims the Emperor held, he was silenced. Still, the development of national learning continued in the Mito School, with the use of the term fukoku kyōhei (rich nation, strong army) to describe the solution to domestic and foreign threats applied by the scholar Fujita Yūkoku. Fujita's son, Fujita Tōko, writing in the wake of news of British victory in the First Opium War insisted that a desirable position for Japan to take would be jōi (repelling the barbarian) to be followed with kaikoku, an opening of the country on equal footing. When faced with the immediate danger the foreign threat possessed, the work of kokugaku scholars led to an evaluation of what was national, which focused attention on the Emperor and Shintō.
Sakuma Shōzan was a midranking samurai under the daimyō Sanada Yukinori of Matsushiro Domain, he held a conservative attitude to the social development of Japanese society, but was practical in his approach to the adoption of Western technology. He supplemented his view of Neo-Confucian ethics with that of the adoption of foreign scientific methods, coining the phrase "Eastern ethics, Western science". In addition to writing about the need for coastal defense, he took charge over cannon founding, built his own camera, and wrote a Japanese-English dictionary designed to contribute to the defense of Japan. He opened a school in Edo, teaching over 5,000 students from all over the country. His efforts to promote men of talent (who would be drawn exclusively from the samurai class), and reorganise the Japanese military were incredibly influential among his disciples, not least Katsu Kaishū and Yoshida Shōin. However, they would serve as the foundation for proposals that would change the social order he was attempting to preserve.
Economic development
The Tenpō Reforms (1841–1843) were a series of readjustments to government policy designed to reform issues in political and economic organisation, the result of which was to reveal a deep divide between the shogunate and the daimyō. During the 1830s and 1840s famine and popular unrest was widespread (e.g. the Osaka revolt), means to resolve these issues and their symptoms had mixed effects. Initial efforts by senior Rōjū Mizuno Tadakuni involved introducing sumptuary laws on the promotion of austerity and limiting consumption. Lowering or confiscating the stipends of samurai retainers alienated them from serving their lords, or even from the social class altogether with some choosing to pursue personal liberty and mercantile freedom not afforded to them due to their expectations as members of the samurai class. Daimyō cancelled debt owed to their own merchants and renegotiated favourable terms for debt owed to merchants under bakufu jurisdiction—due to resulting higher interest rates imposed on the daimyō to borrow more money, across Japan efforts were made to increase domain income.
Fixed rice stipends made the samurai vulnerable to fluctuations in the market, periodic coinage debasement, and the need to transfer this stipend into the new monetary system. For instance, merchants who acted as agents to sell their stipends often pocketed the profit made on these sales. Meanwhile, as part of the development of urban life, artisans and farmers diversified the production of goods and crops which, due to increasing demand, often drained the samurai's resources while other crops became more lucrative to sell than rice. Many samurai were often constantly in debt, with the daimyō living under a system of enforced expenditure by the bakufu to carry out (among other things) the alternate exchange system and public works projects.
The bakufu started to show a small annual gold deficit by 1800, which had grown to over half a million ryō by 1837. To recoup some of these losses, the bakufu initiated a system of forced loans on the daimyō and conferred special privileges to merchants. The resultant diversification of merchant and artisanal industries also brought about a high degree of commercial specialisation and profound changes to rural life. Merchants collectively set up guilds and organised monopolies over goods and services, obtaining official status as contractors and suppliers. By the time of the Tenpō Reforms some of these guilds were broken up as they were believed to be increasing prices, but much of the cause was due to production not keeping up with demand.
The changing economic history of the Edo period drastically altered the traditionally rigid social hierarchy of Tokugawa Japan, with new land becoming available for cultivation and new outlets for commercial trade and manufacturing. Beyond changing the nature of value in local economies, these changes brought with them an erosion of the official class system, with some domains offering the sale of samurai status, and many rich commoners educating their children and bribing their way into adoption by poor samurai families. While the taxation and control over monopolies partially resolved the issue of government finance, it didn't resolve the issue of samurai poverty. Among farmers, the ability to increase land cultivation and cope with price fluctuations exacerbated wealth disparities, the difference in the tax burden between different crops meant that many fell into debt and tenancy to their wealthier neighbours. Satō Nobuhiro claimed that by 1827, at least 30% of farmers had lost land this way.
Foreign influence, 1633–1854
Since 1633, a system of national isolation known as sakoku had been imposed by the Tokugawa shogunate, wherein no person was allowed to enter or leave Japan without permission from the shōgun. The resultant isolationism fuelled systemic diversification of the domestic economy to fulfil local needs. This socio-cultural development combined with strict regulation and censorship on the topic of politics created a "seldom penetrated" lack of international consciousness. Following the Shimabara Rebellion, the non-Catholic Dutch had been permitted to maintain a monopoly through their factory on Dejima, just off the coast of Nagasaki in Saga Domain. This trade, although limited in scope, had led to a growing understanding of the West by Tokugawa intellectuals. While this limited trade with the Dutch had disseminated aspects of Western culture into Japanese society, it also created an uneven understanding of the development of Western technology and military capabilities that did not seem to threaten the socio-political order.
Russian Empire
In the Edo period, a number of incidents occurred where Russians came into contact with Japanese people, due to exploration east by Russia and north by Japan. In 1804, Nikolai Rezanov entered Nagasaki bay with a letter from Tsar Alexander I requesting trade. After being refused this request, he staged a series of raids on Japanese settlements in Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in 1806–1807. The 1811 Golovnin Incident inflamed Japanese mistrust of Russian expeditions, until Golovnin explained that the earlier raids by Rezanov had not been sanctioned by the Tsar. The growing contact with Russia caused the bakufu to attend to the defense of the northern frontier. The Napoleonic Wars drew the attention of both the Russians and the Japanese, who were concerned that the situation in Europe would impact trade with the Dutch. As a result, Russian interest in Pacific exploration declined until the 1840s.