The Tokugawa Shogunate

WHAP/Napp

Cues: / Notes:
  1. Increasing Decentralization
  1. During 1200s and most of 1300s, shogunates – the Kamakura (1185-1333) and the Ashikaga (1336-1573) – preserved order and kept Japan relatively unified but decentralization became a problem in late 1300s and 1400s
  2. Country was breaking down into a patchwork of independent or semi-independent feudal states
  1. Onin War
  1. A civil conflict called the Onin War broke out in 1467 and lasted till 1477
  2. Even after war and for next hundred years, Japan experienced the “Era of Independent Lords”
  3. Daimyo fought daimyo constantly, and each treated his own territory as if it were an autonomous state
  1. The Reunification of Japan
  1. Lasted from 1560 to 1615unification brought about by three men
  2. Firstgeneral Oda Nobunaga, one of first to use gunpowder weapons in Japan but assassinated before completion of full unification
  3. The second unifier was Toyotomi Hideyoshi brought almost all of the country back together again as a single nationHowever, failed to create a political system that could survive after his death
  4. Soon after his death, the five men he had appointed as regents for his young son began to fight each other – and rebel against their boy ruler
  5. The victor and ultimate unifier of Japan was Tokugawa IeyasuIn 1600, Ieyasu defeated his fellow regents at the battle of Sekigahara
  6. In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu appointed himself shogun
  7. From that moment forward, Ieyasu and his descendants would be the masters of Japan
  8. Of course, as all shoguns did, technically ruled in name of the emperor, who was cloistered and powerless in the ancient city of Kyoto (formerly Heian)
  1. The Great Peace
  1. New government Ieyasu created was known as the Tokugawa Shogunate, and it lasted from 1603 to 1868
  2. There were fifteen Tokugawa shoguns, and until near the end, their grasp on power and control over the nation was unassailable
  3. After so many years of war and chaos, stability, law, and order were the shogunate’s chief prioritiesperiod known as the Great Peace
  4. Ieyasu centralized the countryHe established a new capital at the city of Edo, which is now the modern capital, Tokyo
  5. Peace came at the price of dictatorship and increased social stratification
  6. Japan’s class system became more rigid, and until mid-1700s, it was almost

Summaries:
Cues: / impossible for a person to move from one class or profession to another
  1. Power of daimyo was reduced and ordinary citizens were forbidden to own weaponsrulers also maintained a monopoly on gunpowder technology
  1. Women in Tokugawa Japan
  1. Lived under increased restrictions, particularly in samurai class, which was guided by Confucian teachingsWives had to obey husbands or face death
  2. In the lower classes, gender relations were more egalitarian
  3. However, girl children were less valued, sometimes put to death or sold
  1. Isolationism or Act of Seclusion
  1. Sealed Japan off from the rest of the world as much as they could
  2. Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch in Japan during the 1500s had traded and converted many Japanese to Christianity
  3. Hostility to Christianity and fear of foreign political and economic influence were behind the Tokugawa’s decision to close off the country in 1649
  4. Foreign merchants were allowed entry only into one city, Nagasaki
  1. Accomplishments of Tokugawa
  1. Restored and kept the peaceThe population grew rapidly
  2. Rice and grain production more than doubled between 1600 and 1720
  3. Tokugawa Japan became highly urbanized (Edo was one of world’s largest cities), and shogunate built an elaborate network of roads and canals
  4. During 1600s and 1700s, one class that became increasingly wealthy and powerfulmerchant class (exception to general rule of social rigidity)
  5. During Tokugawa era, wood-block print came into its own as an art form
  6. Reasons for differences between Japan and ChinaJapanese urban areas were developing rapidly and Confucian values carried less weight in Japan
  1. Decline
  1. Over the course of the late 1700s and early 1800s, Tokugawa Japan partially modernized, both economically and socially
  2. Agricultural techniques were rationalized or scientific techniques were applied allowing fewer people to grow more food
  3. The reform had the effect of boosting urbanization
  4. It also created the labor force needed for proto-industrialization
  5. Trade, commerce, and manufacturing became increasingly important
  6. A national infrastructure – more roads, canals, and ports – began to emerge
  7. But the increased social and economic clout of the merchant class undermined the power of 5 to 8 percentthe traditional aristocracy
  8. Allowed some modernization but not enough to disrupt status quo
I.In 1853, American gunships appeared off the Japanese coastCommodore Matthew Perry”asking” to open Japan to trade
J. Certain samurai leaders, particularly from the southern provinces of Satsuma and Choshu (Sat-Cho Alliance), urged the shogun to take a hard line
K. Anti-shogun forces asked the last shogun to resign and restore the emperor
L. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 began Japan’s modern age
M. One of the first things Emperor Meiji did, in 1871, was to abolish feudalism
Japan began a process of modernization and industrialization
Summaries:

Questions:

  • Discuss factors that led to increasing decentralization in Japan.
  • Describe the Onin War.
  • Discuss the reunification of Japan.
  • How did the Tokugawa shoguns ensure peace?
  • Why did the Tokugawa shoguns isolate Japan?
  • What economic changes occurred during the Tokugawa period?
  • How did the arrival of Commodore Perry lead to radical changes in Japan?

  1. Which of the following statements concerning the Tokugawa Shogunate in the nineteenth century is most accurate?
(A)By the nineteenth century, the Tokugawa were able to dispense with the feudal organization of earlier Japan.
(B)Increasingly the Shogunate depended on its long-standing alliances with Western powers to maintain its dominance.
(C)The Shogunate bureaucracy had been opened to talented commoners.
(D)The Shogunate continued to combine a central bureaucracy with semi-feudal alliances with regional daimyos and the samurai.
  1. Which of the following groups in Tokugawa Japan advocated concentration of specifically Japanese culture?
(A)Confucian scholars
(B)National studies group
(C)Dutch studies group
(D)Buddhist scholars
  1. Which of the following was not a policy of the new Meiji government?
(A)Establishing a system of nationally appoint prefects
(B)Expanding state power
(C)Abolition of feudalism
(D)Reinforcing the daimyos /
  1. Tokugawa Ieyasu ruled Japan as
(A)Hereditary emperor.
(B)A temporary military ruler in support of the emperor.
(C)The elected lord of the daimyo.
(D)A powerful regional warlord.
(E)None of the above.
  1. What became of the Christian community in Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate?
(A)Christians were restricted to a few carefully controlled missions.
(B)Christians were brutally persecuted and driven into secrecy.
(C)Christianity merged with Buddhism and Shintoism into a new syncretic religion.
(D)Japanese Christians continued to worship but lost support after European trade was restricted.
(E)None of the above
  1. The population growth in Japan slowed after 1700 because of the practice of
(A)Abortion.
(B)Contraception.
(C)Infanticide.
(D)Late marriage.
(E)All of the above.

Excerpt fromwfu.edu

For nearly a century Japan, with approximately 500,000 Catholics by the early 1600s, was the most spectacular success story in Asia for European missionaries. Why did so many convert? Some undoubtedly were attracted by the Christian message of salvation, but others hoped to gain economic or political advantage. The daimyo of Omura seems to have converted in the hope of attracting more trade to his port city of Nagasaki, and Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) the general who unified approximately half of Japan, encouraged Christian missionaries to undermine the political influence of the powerful and wealthy Buddhist monasteries. Nobunaga's tolerance of missionary activity was the main reason for the many converts in the region around Kyoto, Japan's imperial city.

Although the dynamics of Japanese politics at first favored the European missionary effort, when those dynamics changed, Christianity was persecuted and finally crushed. Nobunaga's successor, Hideyoshi (15 36-1598), launched the anti-foreign, anti-Christian policy that culminated in the Tokugawa exclusion edicts. Hideyoshi distrusted Europeans' motives after the Spaniards conquered the Philippines and came to question the loyalty of certain daimyo who had converted. In 1597 he ordered the execution by crucifixion of nine Catholic missionaries and seventeen Japanese converts. In their single-minded pursuit of stability and order, the early Tokugawa also feared the subversive potential of Christianity and quickly moved to obliterate it, even at the expense of isolating Japan and ending a century of promising commercial contacts with China, Southeast Asia, and Europe.

Japan's isolation policy was fully implemented by Tokugawa Iemitsu, the grandson of Ievasu and shogun from 1623 to 1641. He issued edicts that essentially closed Japan to all foreigners and prevented Japanese from leaving.

CLOSED COUNTRY EDICT OF 1635

1. Japanese ships are strictly forbidden to leave for foreign countries.
2. No Japanese is permitted to go abroad. If there is anyone who attempts to do so secretly, he must be executed. The ship so involved must be impounded and its owner arrested, and the matter must be reported to the higher authority.
3. If any Japanese returns from overseas after residing there, he must be put to death…
7. If there are any Southern Barbarians who propagate the teachings of the priests, or otherwise commit crimes, they may be incarcerated in the prison. . . .
8. All incoming ships must be carefully searched for the followers of the priests.

EXCLUSION OF THE PORTUGUESE, 1639

1. The matter relating to the proscription of Christianity is known [to the Portuguese]. However, heretofore they have secretly transported those who are going to propagate that religion.

2. If those who believe in that religion band together in an attempt to do evil things, they must be subjected to punishment.

Thesis Statement: Change Over Time:Japan: From Feudalism to Meiji Restoration

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