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Portrait of The Meiji Restoration

History · Revolutions & empires

The Meiji Restoration

1868 (reign 1868–1912)

Japan ends the shogunate and remakes itself as an industrial power

Fifteen years after American warships forced Japan's ports open, samurai from the domains of Satsuma and Chōshū overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate and restored direct imperial rule under a teenage emperor. The new government abolished the domains and the samurai class, adopted Western law, conscription, railways and industry, moved the capital east to Edo and renamed it, and within a generation had made Japan the first non-Western industrial power.

How to spot them

  • ▸Black ships in a bay in 1853; a treaty signed at Kanagawa the following year
  • ▸A slogan about a rich country and a strong army; another about revering the emperor and expelling the barbarians
  • ▸A last shogun who resigned rather than fight, and a short civil war that ended in Hokkaido
  • ▸A sixteen-year-old sovereign whose reign name means 'enlightened rule'

What happened

A squadron of American warships whose arrival in 1853 forced a closed country to negotiate (1853–54)

Commodore Matthew Perry's 'black ships'; the Convention of Kanagawa followed in March 1854.

The last shogun, who resigned his powers in November 1867 and lived on until 1913

His resignation did not satisfy the Satsuma-Chōshū alliance, which pressed on to war.

A civil war of 1868–69 that ended with a breakaway republic in Hokkaido (1868–69)

It closed at Hakodate, where the short-lived Republic of Ezo surrendered in June 1869.

A five-article pledge of April 1868 promising deliberative assemblies and knowledge sought throughout the world (6 April 1868)

The founding statement of the new government's programme.

A two-year embassy of 1871–73 that toured America and Europe studying institutions to copy (1871–73)

Led by Iwakura Tomomi, with Ōkubo, Kido and Itō among its members.

An 1877 revolt of Satsuma samurai crushed by a conscript army, the last stand of the sword (1877)

Saigō Takamori, once a leader of the new regime, died at Shiroyama.

The 1889 constitution, modelled on Prussia's, that granted a bicameral diet while keeping sovereignty with the throne (1889)

Drafted under Itō Hirobumi, who became Japan's first prime minister in 1885.

Key ideas

  • Fukoku kyōhei — 'enrich the country, strengthen the army' — the slogan of industrialisation and conscription
  • Sonnō jōi — 'revere the emperor, expel the barbarians' — the cry of the movement that brought the shogunate down, promptly abandoned in favour of learning from the West
  • The domains were surrendered in 1869 and abolished in 1871, replaced by prefectures; samurai stipends were commuted and swordbearing banned in 1876

Quick-fire facts

  • •The Tokugawa shogunate had ruled since 1603; the restoration was proclaimed on 3 January 1868
  • •The emperor was Mutsuhito, who took the reign name Meiji, meaning 'enlightened rule'; he was sixteen at his accession
  • •Edo was renamed Tokyo, 'eastern capital', in 1868, and the court moved there from Kyoto the following year
  • •Satsuma and Chōshū, historic rivals, allied in 1866 through the mediation of Sakamoto Ryōma, who was assassinated in 1867
  • •Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar from 1873 and a national conscription law the same year
  • •The first railway, from Shinbashi in Tokyo to Yokohama, opened in 1872
  • •Saigō Takamori, the rebel of 1877, is sometimes called 'the last samurai' and has a famous statue in Ueno Park
  • •The Meiji era ended with the emperor's death in 1912; the general Nogi Maresuke and his wife committed suicide on the day of his funeral
  • •No treaty ended it: the restoration closed with the surrender at Hakodate in June 1869

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Sources