Bakumatsu
Sign in to savewere the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, under foreign diplomatic and military pressure, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji government. The major ideological-political divide during this period was between the pro-imperial nationalists called and the shogunate forces, which included the elite swordsmen.
Article
29 sectionsContents
- Background
- Frictions with foreign powers
- Perry Expedition (1853–54)
- Japanese response
- Earthquakes
- Treaties imposed upon Japan
- Crisis
- Collapse of the Japanese economy
- Political and social crisis
- Initial efforts to revise the imposed treaties
- Sonnō Jōi (1863–66)
- Foreign military interventions against {{transliteration|ja|sonnō jōi}}
- Mito Rebellion
- First Chōshū Expedition
- Hyōgo Naval Expedition
- Second Chōshū Expedition
- Downfall of the Tokugawa shogunate (1867–69)
- Modernization
- Boshin War
- See also
- Shōguns
- Daimyōs
- Other prominent figures
- International relations
- Explanatory footnotes
- Citations
- General and cited references
- Further reading
- External links
were the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, under foreign diplomatic and military pressure, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji government. The major ideological-political divide during this period was between the pro-imperial nationalists called and the shogunate forces, which included the elite swordsmen.
Although these two groups were the most visible powers, many other factions attempted to use the chaos of to seize personal power. Furthermore, there were two other main driving forces for dissent: first, growing resentment on the part of the (or outside lords), and second, growing anti-Western sentiment following the arrival of Matthew C. Perry. The first related to those lords whose predecessors had fought against Tokugawa forces at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, after which they had been permanently excluded from all powerful positions within the shogunate. The second was to be expressed in the phrase , or "revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians". The turning point of the Bakumatsu was during the Boshin War and the Battle of Toba–Fushimi when pro-shogunate forces were defeated.