Changes

''Bakumatsu'' generally refers to the time period between when the [[Black ships]] first arrived ([[1853]]) and when [[Emperor Meiji]] succeeded to the throne ([[1868]]).

 

''Bakumatsu'' (lit. "end of the shogunate") generally refers to the time period between the arrival of [[Commodore Perry|Commodore Matthew Perry]] in [[1853]] and the fall of the [[Tokugawa shogunate]] in [[1868]]. The period is characterized by considerable "opening" to the West, with Westerners beginning to settle in ports such as [[Yokohama]], and Western fashions, architecture, writings, and so forth swiftly spreading and gaining popularity, at least in [[Edo]]. The period is also characterized by considerable political turmoil, as numerous factions within the shogunate and within individual [[han|domains]], as well as independent groups, jostled for power, competing on an array of different agendas.

 

The arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 was, at the time, only the latest in a long line of increasingly frequent incidents of Western incursions, stretching back, perhaps, to the arrival of the Russian envoy [[Adam Laxman]] in [[1792]]. Over the course of the first half of the 19th century, Russian expansion into [[Sakhalin]], the [[Kuril Islands]], and even [[Ezo]] ([[Hokkaido]]) itself, as well as encounters with British, French, and American ships (among others), contributed to a sense of crisis among many samurai officials and notable scholars & writers. News of China's defeat in the [[Opium War]] ([[1840]]-[[1842]]) and the humiliating terms it was forced to agree to in the [[Treaty of Nanjing]] compounded fears already being expressed by ''[[kokugaku]]'' scholars and others, regarding the dangers of Western expansion and encroachment.

 

Meanwhile, a number of domestic concerns contributed to an ongoing, low-level sense of crisis, and/or to the overall weakening of the Pax Tokugawa. Agricultural land had been exhausted; farmers could expand no farther into previously uncultivated land, and they had similarly gone as far as they could with intensification of their production on old lands, at least at current levels of technology. Urbanization continued, and large cities continued to place ever-increasing demands upon agricultural production and supply networks. The wealthy members of the merchant class continued to grow wealthier and to demand (or accrue) increased influence, challenging the social order which placed them at the bottom. And the samurai class - ''daimyô'' & their domains, and the shogunate, in particular - struggled financially, with many in severe debt to creditors from the merchant class.

 

Against that background, Perry's arrival in 1853 has come to be taken as a particularly striking and significant episode, and the [[Convention of Kanagawa]] signed with Perry in [[1854]] indeed marks the beginning of a significant "opening" of Japan to Western trade and Western settlement. By [[1858]], only a few years later, the Tokugawa shogunate would sign more formal Treaties of Amity & Commerce with [[Harris Treaty|the United States]], [[Dutch-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce|the Netherlands]], [[Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce|the United Kingdom]], [[Russo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce|Russia]], and [[Franco-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce|France]].

==Philosophies in Bakumatsu==

==Philosophies in Bakumatsu==