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—Reflections of the Rising Sun —

Japan in the Bakumatsu and Meiji Eras

by Sebastian Dobson

This book offers a unique visual record of possibly the most eventful half century in Japanese history: five decades during which Japan progressed from a backward, feudal society into a modern, industrial nation that, almost a decade before the First World War, defeated a major European power. By the end of this period, the speed of Japan's modernization appeared nothing short of miraculous. In 1905 the Japanologist Basil Hall Chamberlain confessed in Things Japanese to feeling "well-nigh four hundred years old" after living in Japan for little over thirty years:

To have lived through the transition stage of modern Japan makes a man feel preternaturally old; for here he is in modern times, with the air full of talk about bicycles and bacilli and "spheres of influence," and yet he can himself distinctly remember the Middle Ages.

If few contemporaries felt the weight of time as much as Chamberlain, most certainly sympathized. Today, when change is very much taken for granted, it is less easy to accept Chamberlain's complaint. However, we are fortunate that in addition to the vast amount of literature published on Japan at that time (when, as Chamberlain quipped, "not to have written a book on Japan is fast becoming a title to distinction"), we also have access to this period through the medium of photography. Many of the photographs contained in this book are historical records in their own right. These include the posthumous portraits of two European victims of samurai (page 123), which bear striking witness to the violence that accompanied the opening of Japan to the West, and the photographic likeness of Emperor Meiji (page 132), which clearly shows the modernizing course Japan took during his reign. Together the photographs offer a vivid illustration of Japan during the twilight years of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867), known to Japanese historians as the Bakumatsu era, and the subsequent Meiji era (1868-1912). The following introduction is intended to provide a brief historical background to the kaleidoscope of images contained in this book.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, Japan had been ruled by the Tokugawa family for 250 years. The emperor was a shadowy figure at best, who reigned, but did not rule, from the isolation of his court in Kyoto. Since the twelfth century the business of governing the country had been entrusted by the emperor to his shogun, or so-called supreme commander, whose military function provided the martial-sounding appellation bakufu, or "tent government," by which the shogun's administration was known for the remainder of its existence. After intermittent civil war, the coveted position of shogun finally passed to Tokugawa Ieyasu and his descendants in 1603. In time, however, the Tokugawa shogunate lost much of its vigor, and the shogun himself became as much a tool of his councilors as the emperor in Kyoto.

The Tokugawa shoguns, ostensibly ruling in the emperor's name from their base in Edo (Tokyo), maintained their power by carefully manipulating both their own vassals and the local feudal lords known as daimyo. The place of the latter in the political geography of Japan depended to a great extent on which side they or their ancestors had fought during the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. Those who had had the foresight to support the Tokugawas were rewarded with domains close to the center of government and even with the prospect of marrying into the shogun's family; those, on the other hand, who had been damned by their earlier opposition were granted "outer lord" status, which brought with it relegation to domains on the northern and western peripheries of Japan. This group, indirectly benefiting from the distance to Edo, would later form the basis of opposition to the shogunate.

Regardless of their loyalty, however, all lords were required to attend the shogun's court in Edo once a year and, when not resident in the capital, to leave their families behind as security. This "alternate attendance" system proved a useful tool for controlling the daimyo. Not only did it provide the shogunate with virtual hostages during the lords' absence from Edo, but also, since their position demanded that they maintain a suitably impressive estate in Edo and an appropriately large retinue to accompany them on their annual processions to and from the capital, it diverted a substantial amount of clan funds from more practical uses of which the shogunate might not have approved. Nevertheless, in the first half of the nineteenth century a current of opposition to the bakufu began to make itself felt, and more outspoken critics began to question both the legitimacy of the Tokugawa administration and one of its mainstays, the policy of national seclusion.

The early Tokugawas regarded isolation from the outside world as a useful way to stifle opposition inside Japan, since it deprived potentially disruptive elements of the means to ally themselves with predatory foreign nations. Until the arrival in 1853 of Commodore Matthew Perry, Japan's only contact with the outside world was through a small, artificial island at Nagasaki called Deshima, where a few Dutch merchants were allowed to maintain a trading settlement. Through this small, Dutch foothold came a trickle of information about developments in the West, especially in the fields of medicine and military technology. Dutch textbooks and manuals were diligently translated into Japanese, and by this means news of the latest scientific discoveries, including Louis J. M. Daguerre's announcement in 1839 of his successful photographic experiments, reached Japan.

News of more disturbing developments in the outside world also came through Deshima. The first decades of the nineteenth century brought reports of the inroads made by the Western powers in the Far East. Of particular concern was news of the so-called Opium War between Britain and China from 1839 to 1842. The ease with which British warships destroyed the Chinese navy came as a great shock to the Japanese, who had long respected China as a superior civilization. In addition, the concessions extorted from China, including the cession of Hong Kong and the opening of selected ports to foreign trade, provided an object lesson in how Western military strength made a mockery of national isolation. The bogey of seaborne foreign invaders haunted the Japanese imagination over the next two decades, and what many perceived as the inept, not to say spineless, response of the shogunal government to the foreign menace provoked a political crisis that eventually led to the bakufus demise in 1867.

Although popular opinion in the West favored Russia and Britain as the powers most likely to force Japan to open to trade, it was in fact the United States that took the lead. On July 8,1853, Commodore Perry, with a squadron of four American warships under his command, landed at Uraga in Tokyo Bay. Bearing a letter and gifts from President Millard Fillmore, Perry delivered a request for Japan to open diplomatic and commercial relations with the United States, and declared his intention to return with a larger squadron early the following year to receive an answer. Aware of its own weakness and unable to prevaricate, the bakufu reluctantly concluded the so-called Treaty of Peace and Amity at Kanagawa in March 1854, by which the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate were grudgingly opened to American ships. Britain, Russia, and Holland swiftly concluded similar agreements.

In July 1858 the door was further opened when the United States consul general, Townsend Harris, secured a commercial treaty with the shogunate. Among its terms, diplomatic representatives were to be exchanged between the two nations; more Japanese cities (including the capital, Edo) were to be opened; Americans were permitted to reside and trade in these areas without hindrance and under the protection of extraterritorial rights; and trade was to be subject to fixed tariffs. This treaty provided a model for similar agreements concluded with Holland, Russia, Britain, and France in the following month. Granting Westerners full exemption from Japanese law while denying Japan the right to fix its own commercial tariffs, these "unequal treaties," as most Japanese subsequently referred to them, set the tone for Japan's foreign relations until the end of the nineteenth century. In the short term, the treaties, and the opposition they generated in Japan, bedeviled the bakufu for the remainder of its existence.

With the implementation of the treaties, foreign merchants descended upon the newly opened ports and almost at once proved disruptive to both the economic and social order of the country. Most had come in search of easy profits and, taking advantage of the low exchange rate, sought to export as much gold as possible. The drain of domestic bullion, as well as an unusually heavy demand for commodities like silk and tea, helped dislocate the local economy. The very presence of Westerners was just as disruptive. Most foreign residents tended to be arrogant and over-bearing toward the Japanese, and many behaved like the barbarians the Japanese imagined them to be. Not surprisingly, they provided a good target for xenophobic samurai. In 1859, the first year of the foreign settlement in Yokohama, two Russian sailors and a Dutch merchant captain were murdered. The foreign legations established in Edo were also prey to attack. One evening in January 1861 the Dutch interpreter at the American legation in Edo was killed, while six months later a group of rōnin, or masterless samurai, staged an unsuccessful night attack on the British legation at the Tozenji temple. Concern about such incidents, especially at the failure of the Japanese authorities to find or punish any of the perpetrators, led the governments of Britain and France in 1863 to maintain troops in Yokohama for the protection of foreign residents. Ironically the next victims of the rōnin were officers of these same garrisons. On October 14, 1863, Lieutenant Henri Camus of the French colonial infantry was dragged from his horse and cut to pieces while riding through Yokohama. His murderers were never found. On November 21 of the following year, two officers of the British 20th Regiment, Major George Baldwin and Lieutenant Robert Bird, were brutally murdered during a visit to Kamakura. Significantly, after five years of such incidents, this was the first attack to be punished, and the summary execution of those involved in the murder discouraged further attacks for a time.

In the years following 1860 the bakufu dispatched six major missions to America and Europe, largely in an attempt to settle difficulties created by the treaties of 1858 and occasionally to renegotiate some face-saving amendments. On a diplomatic level these efforts served only to reveal how poorly prepared the shogunate and its representatives were to deal with the realities of international diplomacy. Especially poignant was the mission to France in 1863 of Ikeda Nagaoki, the governor of Chikugo Province (now the southern part of Fukuoka Prefecture). Given the unwanted and unrealistic commission to secure separate French agreement to the closure of Yokohama, Ikeda came round instead to the view that Japan should indeed open to the West. This revelation did not, however, prepare him for the wiles of French diplomacy, and unwittingly, it seems, he concluded a treaty which, far from securing the bakufu's object, committed it to purchasing armaments from French firms and consenting to French intervention against the Choshu clan at Shimonoseki. When Ikeda returned to Edo, he was immediately dismissed and placed under house arrest, and the only pleasant memory he came to retain of his visit to Paris was of having his portrait taken by the celebrated French photographer Gaspard Félix Tournachon (better known by his pseudonym, Nadar). Where the shogunal missions were most successful was in giving their younger members the opportunity to improve upon their knowledge of the West, which so far had been gained only from books. Among those who benefited from this experience and in turn were able to assist in the modernization of Japan was the educator Fukuzawa Yukichi, who served as a member of missions in 1860 and 1863 and in the Meiji era would be the foremost advocate of Western ideas in Japan.

In the meantime the bakufu suffered further upsets. Violence against foreigners by discontented samurai found the bakufu powerless to act and yet liable to pay compensation for incidents over which it had no control. Opposition to the opening of the country also swelled the ranks of the shogunate's critics, who now rallied under the slogan sonnō jōi, or "Revere the emperor, expel the barbarian." Particularly prominent in the antiforeign agitation were members of the Choshu clan, who for a time influenced the policies of the imperial court at Kyoto. At Choshu prompting, the emperor refused to endorse any of the treaties concluded in Japan's name with the Western powers and in 1862 ordered the shogun to revoke them and to commence expelling the "barbarians" from Japan forthwith. Although painfully aware that such instructions were impossible to implement, the shogunate could hardly refuse. The efforts of its most able councilor, Ii Naosuke, to enforce the treaties had resulted in his assassination in 1860, while the shogun's control over the daimyo had weakened to the extent that the alternate-attendance system was terminated in October 1862. Faced with growing opposition, the shogun reluctantly complied and agreed to a firm date on which expulsion could begin. In the end, only the Choshu domain obeyed the summons, and on the appointed day, June 25, 1863, the Shimonoseki Strait was closed and shore batteries began firing on foreign shipping.

A foretaste of how the foreign powers would respond came a few months later in the form of the British navy. In the previous year a young English merchant, Charles Richardson, had been fatally injured by irate samurai when he and his traveling companions had failed to dismount before the procession of the emperor's envoy to Edo. The culprits had been identified as men of the Satsuma clan, and although the British government had duly demanded compensation from the clan chief, Shimazu Hisamitsu, no satisfactory response had been given. Therefore, in August 1863 the British government dispatched a naval squadron under Vice-Admiral Augustus Kuper to Kagoshima, the capital of the Satsuma domain, to press the matter directly. Attempts at negotiation failed, and Kuper responded by bombarding the city. This episode, the only military action in what was later called the Anglo-Satsuma War, proved surprisingly inconclusive in that both sides were able to claim a victory: despite some losses, Kuper could report that Kagoshima had been devastated, with a fire in the city extending the damage even further; his Satsuma adversaries, on the other hand, could claim that since some of their batteries were still in use and since the British had sailed away after the bombardment without landing, they had successfully defended themselves.

The Choshu clan's stand on the Kammon Strait ended less contentiously. On September 5, 1864, a multinational naval squadron made up of British, French, American, and Dutch warships bombarded the town of Shimonoseki. The Choshu shore batteries, which had terrorized foreign shipping for over a year, were occupied by landing parties of sailors and marines and over the next few days, while the daimyo sued for peace, the artillery was dismantled and destroyed.

The display of Western military might at Kagoshima and Shimonoseki did much to discredit the jōi movement, especially at the imperial court, where a coup by more moderate groups had removed Choshu influence and eventually led to the emperor giving his belated approval to the treaties. The Satsuma domain in particular benefited from the lesson in British gunboat diplomacy, and its leaders embarked on a policy remarkably similar to that which the bakufu was attempting to pursue (and which the Meiji government would successfully follow): efforts were made to improve relations with the foreign powers, especially Britain; students were sent to Europe; foreign armaments were purchased; and the clan army and navy were built up along European lines. Likewise, the Choshu domain abandoned its anti-Western stance and, on the initiative of some of its younger samurai, began to reconcile its earlier differences with the Satsuma clan concerning the best means of achieving national unification. In 1866, after Choshu had successfully convinced Satsuma of the need to overthrow the shogunate, a secret military pact was concluded between the two clans. This Satsuma-Choshu alliance represented the first appearance of organized opposition to the shogunate, under the weight of which, in 1867, shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu voluntarily resigned the position his ancestors had held for over 260 years and which he himself had inherited earlier that same year. On January 3, 1868, Satsuma and Choshu loyalists under Saigo Takamori occupied Kyoto and proclaimed the "restoration" of political power to the teenage emperor (to be called Emperor Meiji) and the confiscation of Tokugawa estates.

The new era name of Meiji (meaning enlightened rule) stood not only for the succession of a new emperor but, on a grander scale, for a new era in Japanese history. What had in fact occurred on January 3,1868, was not so much a "restoration" as a coup d'état, which the Satsuma-Choshu alliance and its supporters carried out in the emperor's name. As coups go, the Meiji Restoration was largely bloodless, especially when compared with the horrors of the recent civil war in the United States. Edo was surrendered to Saigo Takamori with hardly a shot being fired and, after defeating shogunal loyalists in a couple of skirmishes outside Kyoto, the new "imperial" forces encountered additional pockets of resistance only in the north of the country, the last of which, at Hakodate, held out until June 1869.

Symbolic of the new era was the relocation of the capital to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo, literally eastern capital. The following years saw the abolition of the feudalistic old order and the establishment of a centralized, national government. In 1869 the former class restrictions—under which the population had been organized in the descending hierarchy of samurai, farmer, craftsman, and merchant—were removed. In 1871 the domains and their private armies were abolished and replaced by a pref ectural system administered directly from Tokyo. In the same year the new central government formally "permitted" samurai to discard their distinctive swords; five years later, having gained in confidence, the government issued a firm order prohibiting the wearing of swords by all except members of the police and the new armed forces. In 1873 all adult males, regardless of social standing, were declared liable for conscription into the new armed forces. For the samurai, who had long monopolized the profession of arms, these and other measures, such as the reduction and subsequent termination of their hereditary stipends, spelt their extinction as a class. Some accommodated themselves to the new regime and pursued careers in the new armed forces, the bureaucracy, or, unthinkable less than a generation before, commerce. Others could not and, painfully aware that there was no place for them in the new Japan, they formed a discontented and potentially dangerous underclass.

Ironically it was samurai from those domains instrumental in the Restoration who felt most betrayed. Between 1874 and 1876 samurai discontent manifested itself in isolated revolts across the former Choshu and Satsuma domains; in 1877, however, the government was faced with a full-scale rebellion in the former Satsuma domain under the charismatic leadership of Saigo Takamori. The conflict raged for eight months. Despite a spirited resistance by the rebel samurai, they proved no match for the government's conscript army, and after a final, desperate stand at Kagoshima the Satsuma Rebellion ended in defeat and Saigo's suicide on September 24, 1877. Any doubt as to the permanence of the Meiji regime was now removed.

The government could now turn to the task of modernizing the nation. Modernization was not only a matter of national survival in a world dominated by the West but also one of national pride. What the Meiji government desired above all was the abolition of the "unequal treaties," which, it was naively believed, would occur once Japan had convinced the world that she was now an enlightened and civilized nation. Thus, for the first two decades of the Meiji era, modernization occurred at a frantic pace, marked as much by an indiscriminate adoption of Western institutions, customs, and ideas as by an equally indiscriminate disdain for all things Japanese.

Nothing escaped the attention of the Meiji reformers. After recasting its bureaucracy, armed forces, and other institutions along Western lines, and after encouraging the adoption of outward signs of Western civilization, including Western styles of architecture, dress, and hairstyle, the government also sought to bring Japan more into line with the prudish standards of the Victorian era. Nudity was one particular obsession of the authorities. Whereas the new elite in Japan had learned something of Western notions of shame and decency, the lower classes retained a traditional Japanese indifference to the naked human form, and the government regularly issued ordinances on what could and could not be displayed in public. The centuries-old custom of communal mixed bathing was now prohibited; henceforth, public bathhouses would have to separate the sexes. Grooms, coolies, and rickshaw drivers, who had previously got away with wearing a simple loincloth in the summer heat, now had to cover themselves up. Since tattooing, which had developed into something of an art form, was now frowned upon as a backward custom, and was even banned for a time, the laboring and the other tattooed classes were now doubly obliged to take care of what they exposed in front of foreigners. Such efforts by the functionaries of what some would call "New Japan," both to protect the sensibilities of Western visitors and to prevent the country from being embarrassed by its less "enlightened" citizens, regularly punctuated the national drive toward "civilization" and "enlightenment."

Things almost went too far. One group of patriotic subjects advocated the use of Roman script, another the adoption of English as the official language of the country. One Japanese intellectual even went so far as to suggest that the racial stock of Japan could be improved by encouraging intermarriage between Japanese females and Caucasian males. However, the most conspicuous manifestation and one that came to symbolize the frantic pace of Westernization as a whole was a building called the Rokumeikan.