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This Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation Has Been Downloaded from the King’S Research Portal At CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by King's Research Portal This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The Collapse of Tokugawa Japan and the role of Sir Ernest Satow in the Meiji Restoration, 1853-1869 Sakakibara, Tsuyoshi Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. 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Nov. 2017 The Collapse of Tokugawa Japan and the role of Sir Ernest Satow in the Meiji Restoration, 1853-1869 Tsuyoshi Sakakibara Department of History King’s College London Submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy October, 2015 1 Declaration I confirm that the research contained in this thesis is in my own research and is submitted as such for the degree of Master of Philosophy. Tsuyoshi Sakakibara 2 Abstract The main argument relates to an analysis of the essays written by Ernest Mason Satow in 1866, known as Eikoku Sakuron in Japanese, and also to an analysis of British diplomacy at the time of the civil war and during the Meiji Restoration in 1868-69. The major reason why these two areas should be examined is that the common understanding of them, which Japanese historiography has traditionally defined as historical truth, turns out not to be true. The main idea, which it was planned to argue in this thesis, was to emphasise the efforts of Satow during the Meiji Restoration, because Japanese historiography has consistently defined Eikoku Sakuron as the milestone for Japanese political modernization. In other words without Satow, nineteenth-century Japanese could never have promoted their remarkable national transformation. This modernization was connected with British diplomacy. Japanese historiography asserts that thanks to the British, who had supported the anti-feudal forces, the Japanese could found their modern state in such a short period. These two historical assumptions are viewed as common sense even in present Japanese society. However, through this research, it must now be recognised that the tenets defined by orthodox Japanese historiography cannot be accepted in wider academic argument, because what the Japanese have always believed is largely refuted by British and other sources. Regarding Eikoku Sakuron, although it was read by some Japanese, it did not create a huge psychological 3 impact in nineteenth-century Japan. Satow’s argument was revolutionary, but it can hardly be defined as the guideline for eventual modernization. So why has Japanese historiography clung to its ideas and definition? When this question was asked, the direction for this thesis became established. The Japanese interpretation of the Meiji Restoration was established not to pursue historical truth but to justify political actions. In Japanese historiography, there is a tendency that when historians discuss the Meiji Restoration, they revere it unconditionally, whereas when discussing feudalism, they do not analyse it fairly. The Meiji Restoration will be argued more objectively in this thesis. It will become the opportunity to challenge traditional Japanese historiography. 4 Table of contents Preface…………………………………………………………………………6 Chapter I: Introduction …………………………………………………… 10 Chapter II: Japan before the arrival of Satow ………………………… 51 Chapter III: Namamugi Incident …………………………………………90 Chapter IV: Analysis of volume I and II of Eikoku Sakuron …………115 Chapter V: Analysis of volume III of Eikoku Sakuron ……………… 150 Chapter VI: Eikoku Sakuron: A counter argument ………………… 172 Chapter VII: Alcock’s Memorandum …………………………………… 198 Chapter VIII: The Meiji Restoration …………………………………… 214 Chapter IX: British diplomacy during the civil war, 1867-1869 …… 250 Chapter X: The Japanese background to the Meiji Restoration …… 288 Chapter XI: Conclusion …………………………………………………… 318 Appendices…………………………………………………………………… 333 Bibliography………………………………………………………………… 343 5 Preface The history of Japan’s political transformation in the late nineteenth century has been written many times. A largely closed and feudal society at the time of Commodore Perry’s (1794-1858) visit in 1853, within 15 years its governmental structure was revolutionised and many of the assumptions which Japanese people held, both about their internal social relationships and their national identity, were significantly questioned. It is commonplace that the Tokugawa Shogunate failed to cope with the crises in Japan caused by the arrival of the foreigners, and that its enemies, particularly in the southern provinces, sought to exploit its evident weakness in their own bid for power. Perry’s initial communications caused confusion within the government, yet these early contacts did not in themselves undermine the regime. By 1858, however, the government of the Shogun (Tycoon) had been pressed into treaty agreements to open important ports to international commerce, thereby threatening internal economic stability and a breakdown of public order. Impotent to expel the foreigners, increasingly discredited among sections of a feudal nobility effectively independent within their own domains, and unable to prevent a resurgent and violent nationalist movement which saw disorder in the capital and attacks on foreign residents, the Shogunate delayed the inevitable by means of the London Protocol in 1862 – effectively postponing the opening of major ports for a further five years. 6 For the Tycoon, though, the crisis would not go away. His standing as the ruler of Japan was beginning to be doubted, both by the Western powers who had signed treaties with his government and, more alarmingly, by elements within Japan. Was his regime fit to defend the nation? A diplomatic rift with Britain following the death of a merchant led to a naval bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863. Shimonoseki was likewise attacked in 1864 after foreign shipping had been fired on from shore installations. In 1865 a combined naval demonstration, led by the British, compelled a treaty ratification which the Japanese had wished to avoid. Increasingly isolated in Edo, the last of the Tokugawa Shoguns renounced his political status in November 1867; within weeks, the nation was plunged into a civil war. The victors in this struggle were the rulers and samurais of Satsuma (modern Kagoshima) and Choshu (modern Yamaguchi) who had rallied around the imperial bloodline. Consigned for centuries to political obscurity in Kyoto, the Imperial Court thereby emerged in 1868 at the head of a new political model for Japan in what has always been known as the Meiji Restoration. In 1869 all feudal lords returned their hereditary fiefs to the Emperor. In 1871 they were ordered to leave their territories, receiving, as compensation, noble titles under the new regime. Japan was fast developing as a centralised state. Important questions arise from this narrative, many of them related to the understanding of events held by subsequent generations of the Japanese themselves. Where did mid nineteenth-century ideas for constitutional change come from? And what was the role of foreign, 7 particularly British, diplomatic intervention in bringing about these profound changes? Japanese historiography has been consistent on these points, long ascribing a crucial contribution to the development of political understanding among educated Japanese to essays written in 1866 by a young translator at the British Legation - Ernest Satow. In the 1860s, too, British diplomacy was supposedly sympathetic to the restoration of imperial authority and thereby instrumental in ending the feudal administration of the Tokugawa clan. In both scholarship and popular perspective, these fundamental assumptions have stood the test of time and have for long been accepted as historical truths, yet the documentary evidence for both is either non-existent or else too often dependent on subsequent and politically-inspired distortions of events and motives. This thesis aims to test these inherited truths. It is thus not concerned simply with telling the story of how Japan emerged into international politics and the world economy in the mid nineteenth century. It is as much concerned with the making and transmission of Japanese historiography as it is with unravelling the complexities of Japanese history between 1853 and 1868. It will attempt to establish what is real and what might more usefully be regarded as imaginary during these two turbulent decades which forged the modern nation state. It examines
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