Episode 528 – Bakumatsu, Part 1

April 26, 2024

This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: the beginning of the end of the Tokugawa shogunate. Commodore Perry’s expedition to Edo will begin a process of radical political change as a teetering Tokugawa shogunate is forced to confront a challenge of Western imperialism that it will not prove equal to resisting.

Sources

Jansen, Marius. The Making of Modern Japan

Jansen, Marius. Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration

Beasley, Craig. The Meiji Restoration

Craig, Albert M. Choshu in the Meiji Restoration.

Keene, Donald. Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World

Images

Another image of the Perry train.

This Japanese woodblock print depicts Perry (center) flanked by two of his officers during their second voyage to Japan (1854).
Lithograph of American gifts to the Japanese, from the Perry expedition narrative. You can see the train in the foreground.
Japanese delegates being received at the White House during the ratification of the Harris Treaty, 1860.
A statue of Ii Naosuke in his hereditary domain of Hikone.
Portrait of Yoshida Shoin, one of the people executed in the Ansei Purges. Creator unknown; from the National Diet Library of Japan.