Tokugawa Regime Essay
“Rise and Fall of the Tokugawa Regime”
The Tokugawa period (1603-1868), also called the Edo period, was the final phase of traditional Japan. It was a time of internal peace, political stability, and economic growth under the shogunate founded by Tokugawa Ieyasu. As shogun, Ieyasu achieved dominance over the entire country by balancing the power of “potentially hostile domains with strategically placed allies and collateral houses” (McClain 1944 pg. 31). It was an era of oppressive rule where the hierarchical division between samurai, peasant, artisan, and merchant were strictly maintained. As a further strategy of control, Ieyasu’s successor required the daimyo to maintain households in the Tokugawa administrative capital of Edo and reside there for several months every other year. This resulting system of …show more content…
They had fended off advances by the Russians in the 1790s and early 1800s and by the British in the 1820s. However, by the 1840s, the trade routes from North America to Asia took the ships into the vicinity of Japan. The prohibition of the Shogun against foreign ships landing on Japan became more and more intolerable. In 1853, a U.S. naval delegation led by Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrived in Japan with a task of remedying the situation. Perry forced the Shogun to agree a treaty to permit Japanese merchants to trade with visiting foreign ships and he vowed not to disrupt the Japanese social system. However, that was exactly what happened. The Shogun lost face in not being able to prevent foreign visitations. Furthermore, “the intensely conservative and nationalistic Japanese” (McClain 1944 pg. 132), particularly in the provinces of Satsuma and Chosu, asserted that the Shogun should be punished and replaced. They were particularly enraged because the Shogun had entered into an agreement without securing the Emperor’s permission. For this social error, the Shogun had to be
The Tokugawa period (1603-1868), also called the Edo period, was the final phase of traditional Japan. It was a time of internal peace, political stability, and economic growth under the shogunate founded by Tokugawa Ieyasu. As shogun, Ieyasu achieved dominance over the entire country by balancing the power of “potentially hostile domains with strategically placed allies and collateral houses” (McClain 1944 pg. 31). It was an era of oppressive rule where the hierarchical division between samurai, peasant, artisan, and merchant were strictly maintained. As a further strategy of control, Ieyasu’s successor required the daimyo to maintain households in the Tokugawa administrative capital of Edo and reside there for several months every other year. This resulting system of …show more content…
They had fended off advances by the Russians in the 1790s and early 1800s and by the British in the 1820s. However, by the 1840s, the trade routes from North America to Asia took the ships into the vicinity of Japan. The prohibition of the Shogun against foreign ships landing on Japan became more and more intolerable. In 1853, a U.S. naval delegation led by Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrived in Japan with a task of remedying the situation. Perry forced the Shogun to agree a treaty to permit Japanese merchants to trade with visiting foreign ships and he vowed not to disrupt the Japanese social system. However, that was exactly what happened. The Shogun lost face in not being able to prevent foreign visitations. Furthermore, “the intensely conservative and nationalistic Japanese” (McClain 1944 pg. 132), particularly in the provinces of Satsuma and Chosu, asserted that the Shogun should be punished and replaced. They were particularly enraged because the Shogun had entered into an agreement without securing the Emperor’s permission. For this social error, the Shogun had to be