Meiji Ishin Research Paper

The ‘Meiji Ishin' or ‘Restoration’ occurred in 1868 Japan, and was the restoration of imperial rule, under Emperor Meiji which ended the Tokugawa Bakufu (1603-1867) and feudal Japan. After an extended period of prosperity and peace under the Tokugawa Bakufu, the population of Japan, who knew only civil war and violence before the unification under the Shogunate, saw a deterioration of the Samurai and Daimyo waring classes into political and bureaucratic classes, as a lack of wars led to ‘waring classes’ becoming redundant. This saw an intense displeasure arise between all social classes, as the lower level samurai became powerless in the light of change, causing them to seek other forms of employment, whilst the more powerful samurai and daimyo

These treaties, such as the ‘Treaty of Amity and Commerce’ (1858) with America, were forced upon Japan, and saw her become exploited with harsh trade deals and forced to open her ports. Young Mutsuhito (posthumously famed as Meiji), and his backing band of elites saw this weakness in the Shogunate; and saw the imperative need of modernisation for the survival and ending of the exploitation of Japan. Ultimately, this lead to the 1868 reinstating of imperial rule, which forced the last shogun, Yoshinobu Tokugawa, to ‘abdicate’ out of threat of violent overthrow. It is due to this ‘revolutionary action’ of forcing an ‘abdication’, alongside the immediate and long term effects on all aspects of Japan, that the Ishin can be perceived to be a ‘true revolution’, and thus is validated in being called a ‘true

Whilst the Ishin remains an academic subject in writing, it is a topic that historians have been unable to remain objective in during discourse. Evidently, Beasley displays this, as his educated background constantly forces him to evaluate the Ishin based on comparisons of other events, without viewing events anomalously, therefore hindering the validation of the Ishin as a true revolution. This is evident when Beasley questions “how does it compare with other great political upheavals in other parts of the world at other times?”, thus questioning was it a true revolution compared to the previously established true revolutions such as the French and Russian revolutions? This questioning, however, displays how Beasley cannot remain objective in his viewing of the idiosyncratically Japanese revolution, and instead, gathers comparisons in order to scale the Ishin, therefore impeding the Meiji Ishin’s validity as a true revolution, alongside directly contrasting the notion of the Meiji Restoration was a revolution. Contrastingly, Gordon is able to uphold a level of objectivity throughout his writings regarding the Meiji Ishin that allow him to be untarnished by expectations. Whilst Gordon himself does question “how does it compare to its French and Russian counterparts?”, and thus brings forth some comparison, he also outlines how “a problem facing one who