Sakuma Shozan, Katsu Kaishu
and Sakamoto Ryoma
Indispensable Minds
of the Meiji Restoration
by Romulus Hillsborough
 |
This year (2004) marks the 150th anniversary of the Kanagawa Treaty between the United States and Japan. Signed on March 31, 1854, it is also known as the Treaty of Peace and Amity -- certainly a misnomer! The treaty, in fact, was a result of the gunboat diplomacy of U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry, whose flotilla of four warships had threatened Edo (modern-day Tokyo), the shogun's capital, in the previous summer. The Kanagawa Treaty officially ended two centuries of Japanese isolation, and inaugurated diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan. The treaty also marked the beginning of the end of the samurai regime that had ruled Japan for the past two and a half centuries. The samurai regime was known as the Tokugawa Bakufu Tokugawa Shogunate in English. The Bakufu was headed by the shogun, who was also head of the ruling Tokugawa family. The Kanagawa Treaty triggered fourteen years of turmoil in Japan an historical era known as the Bakumatsu (literally, End of the Bakufu). The Bakumatsu culminated with the shogun's abdication and restoration of power to the emperor the event which historians call the Meiji Restoration. During the Bakumatsu Japan was rent asunder, with samurai faction fighting samurai faction. On one side were those who espoused the slogan Revere the Emperor and Expel Barbarians. The other side, represented by the Bakufu and its supporters, espoused a policy known as Open the Country. The side that revered the emperor eventually opposed the shogun, embraced the war cry Imperial Reverence and Down with the Bakufu, and fought to overthrow the two-and-a-half-century-old military government at Edo. Sakuma Shozan, Katsu Kaishu and Sakamoto Ryoma Indispensable Minds of the Meiji Restoration Back to Table of Contents -- Samurai History Papers # 2 Back to Samurai History Papers List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2005 by Romulus Hillsborough. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com |