| Transcript |
- indebted to the merchant class. Extraterritorial jurisdiction and the low tariff�s of the Western trade treaties further exacerbated the situation. The class structure was
being challenged and undermined by spiraling prices, social instability, political corruption, unemployment and intolerable living conditions. Natural disasters like the great 1855 earthquake, as well as crop failures, famines and the 1866 rice riots further weakened the Tokugawa regime.
With the feudal system fast disintegrating, it became clear that the shogunate was in a hopeless position. An influential group of samurai reform activists began plotting to restore power to the Emperor.
Tokugawa Yoshinobu (1837-1913), the fifteenth and last Tokugawa shogun, recognized that his shogunate was failing, and so resigned as shogun in 1867 and reached a compromise where he would preside over a governing council. However, the agreement was shortlived, and after a brief civil war his forces were defeated in 1868. He was compelled to submit to the rule of the Emperor who became known as the Meiji Emperor (r. 1868-1912). The Emperor moved from Kyoto into the shoguns castle in Edo and the city was renamed Tokyo (meaning eastern capital). The Emperor came to be regarded as the supreme national symbol, and suddenly the group of samurai activists who helped him gain power (mainly from samurai clans in Choshu, Satsuma and Tosa), found themselves in control of the new Imperial government.
They embarked on a course of radical change and rapid modernization,
including a complete overhaul of the feudal system. The feudal lords were persuaded to give up their fiefs to the Emperor and the centralized
government in return for financial settlements and political positions. The four separate classes�the samurai, the farmers, the artisans and the merchants�were abolished and the samurai were stripped of their social and economic status. The greatest blow to the samurais pride came in 1876 when the government prohibited them from wearing their traditional two swords. The government stopped paying them large stipends, so they were forced to fend for themselves as common citizens. Some of the abler samurai quickly rose to prominence in the new government, while others went into business or joined the military officer corps of the new army and navy. Some samurai continued their official duties as firemen and policemen, which entitled them to wear swords. Other less capable and impoverished samurai, unable to adapt or learn new methods of livelihood, were obliged to sell their cherished armour and swords. The feudal system set up during the Edo period was truly at an end. Under the Meiji Emperor, Japan started on an astonishingly swift metamorphosis from a feudal state to a modern industrial nation and major military power.
27 Hiroshige II Utagawa (1829-69) Big Waves at Odawara /
Grosses vagues a Odawara Series: Scenic Spots on the Tokaido, 1863 Woodblock print
This print was made to commemorate the important journey from Edo to Kyoto made in 1863 by the Tokugawa shogun lemochi (1846-66) who was summoned by the Emperor Komei. He was escorted by 3,000 retainers. It marked the first time in 230 years that a shogun had visited the emperor in Kyoto. The shogun was summoned by the Emperor to discuss how to expel foreigners from the country, but this journey came to be seen as a sign of the weakening of the shogun�s power.
|
|---|
